


[untethered]

by apricotcake



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky trying to recover on his own, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dehumanization, Dissociation, Flashbacks, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Hitchhiking, M/M, Mentions of Sleep Deprivation, Pining, Pissing on Canon While Staring The Russo Brothers Dead in The Eyes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers is a lovesick idiot, Suicidal Thoughts, Touch-Starved, a few instances of it but nothing over the top, ahh the beauty and charm of our great nation, let these fools be happy, so so so many oh boy, some unhealthy coping mechanisms, well it's more like, yeah this isn't a fun one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 04:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21293330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricotcake/pseuds/apricotcake
Summary: The Asset does not succumb to fear, but now it is a crawling, deep thing in his chest. It drives him forward. He allows it to.He doesn’t have much else, anyway.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 26
Kudos: 178





	[untethered]

**Author's Note:**

> Now including a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/coconutmylk/playlist/6Dlx3B6pPtHksl6AoCNPA8?si=gWhO8luMS5adBZ3fusmFkw) by yours truly :’)

The Asset cannot disobey commands. The Asset must return to an extraction point and wait for further instruction within seventy two hours before excessive force is taken. 

He watches the news through the window of a bar. It is the same report over and over. Hundreds are dead, and those who survived are not expected to live much longer.

It has been ninety six hours since the Triskelion fell, since the helicarriers blew to pieces. The city is in shambles. HYDRA has scattered like rats from a ship, and The Asset is alone.

-

He lost most of his weapons on the helicarrier, the remainder sunk to the bottom of the Potomac River. He is vulnerable. He blends in with stolen clothes and fights exhaustion in alleyways and shelters, but he knows he cannot stay for long.

So, he leaves DC behind. He crosses the Key Bridge into Arlington, and keeps walking, past stores and fast food restaurants he can’t afford, gas stations and apartment buildings. It’s too small, and he can’t stand it. 

Somewhere like DC, no one truly notices each other. No one has given him more than a second glance, but somewhere smaller, they could watch his behavior. They could recognize him. He can’t do that now. He’s not ready to integrate. 

For now, he’s alone, and he needs to take advantage of it. HYDRA will try to rise from the ashes once more, but distraction will weaken them.

Even knowing that, he can’t shake the possibility that his handlers must be licking their wounds somewhere, waiting for him to reappear. If any of them managed to make it out of the wreckage alive. 

The thought is foolish. Tainted with fear. The wind rushes past, warm. The Asset suddenly feels the buzz of electricity boiling under his skin. 

The Asset does not succumb to fear, but now it is a crawling, deep thing in his chest. It drives him forward. He allows it to. 

He doesn’t have much else, anyway.

-

Night slips over Virginia and conceals him seamlessly. It’s easier to navigate than the day.

His senses are just as sharp in the dark, maybe even sharper. HYDRA can’t afford faults. The Asset must perform even with compromise.

He’s been walking for hours, but he doesn’t stop for breath. He’s never needed to before, and there’s no point in it until he’s as far away from the city as possible.

He cannot help feeling eyes on the back of his neck. The thought of Rumlow or any other member of STRIKE rushing at his heels is far too real. 

It must have happened before. 

He has a feeling it’s happened before. 

He stops, rooted to his spot on the side of the road. Again, his body aches with phantom shocks of electricity, white hot tendrils wrapping around his muscles and squeezing his heart until it feels like it might stop. 

This happens for several minutes. His body shakes through it. His head feels tender. 

A car, dated and faded blue, screeches slowly up beside him. The Asset has a knife hidden in his boot, but no other weapons to speak of. 

“You alright over there, guy?” A voice asks, and The Asset’s stomach drops heavily. That’s new. “Need some help?”

_Don’t look up._ He catches a glance from the corner of his eye. Late fifties. Baseball cap on his head. Dark grey scruff. 

The Asset’s throat is dry and feels filled with gravel. “I’m fine,” he says. He picks at a thread in the pocket of his worn, hole-ridden jacket.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” the man says without malice. “Need a ride?”

“No.” He says quickly, and then freezes. _Stop. Think_. “...Yes.”

“How far you headed?”

“How far can you go?” The Asset asks.

“I can get you to Chantilly, if that helps any,” the man says, and The Asset finally turns to look at him. “It’s only a half-hour away, but I can leave you in town or by a hotel if that’s what you need.”

He steps closer. “Good enough,” he says. His tongue feels heavy and strange in his mouth. He doesn’t do much talking. He’s done a lot of it lately. It’s tiring. He hates it.

The other man gives him a strangely open expression. The Asset opens the door and sits cramped in the passenger seat. The car screeches and struggles to start, but it begins its trek down the highway.

\- 

The question The Asset was dreading comes after fifteen minutes of complete silence. 

“You got a name, son?”

Son. He must look young. He doesn’t feel young. 

The helicarrier. The Smithsonian. A face on a poster that belongs to The Asset, but doesn’t. The sun in his eyes and the cloying heat as he bolted from the museum. It brings back the feeling of standing at a precipice. He skirts around the edges of the answer, but he shakes it away_._

The name refuses to come out of his mouth, anyway.

“Jack,” The Asset says instead, watching the dim yellow of the streetlights zip past. “My name is Jack.”

“I’m Cliff. Good meeting you, Jack,” the man says, and then laughs uncomfortably. “Funny meeting, but not too bad. You seem like you’re having a night, though.” 

The Asset doesn’t understand. “Meaning?” he asks.

“Doesn’t seem like tonight’s treating you well, that’s all,” Cliff says. “Hope I’m wrong, though.”

Things fall silent after that. The Asset is relieved. A sign for Chantilly rushes by, and it doesn’t take much longer before they pass a sign for a rest stop, a shopping center. He can see a sign for a motel, but it must be a few miles up the road. 

The Asset wanted to be further away, but this will have to do. _It’s a start_, he reminds himself. _Just a start. _

“Okay if I leave you up there?” Cliff asks as he turns toward the exit, through a small road choked thickly trees. “I know it wasn’t much help, but I hope it’s good enough.”

“It’s good enough.”

The Asset clicks his seatbelt off and shifts down to stretch, curling his fingers around his knife. It feels heavy and warm in his grip, sure and sharp. No witnesses. 

Cliff sees the flash of the blade, even in the dark, and blanches, raising his hand quickly. “Woah. Hey, Jack, listen to me. Just—“

The Asset does what he was made for, and jams the knife into Cliff’s throat. 

A thick squelch of blood, and the car is sent spinning into the trees as Cliff chokes, loses control of the wheel. The Asset jumps from the car before it crashes, flips off the road and into the woods.

-

The Asset steals a jacket and gloves from the trunk, along with $200 from a mangled glovebox. He stashes his knife and walks toward the rest stop, wipes blood on his pants.

The exit is devoid of other cars. By the time Cliff is found, The Asset will be long gone. 

-

He doesn’t go to a motel. He doesn’t dare go to a shelter. He swallows the bile rising up his throat when he steps into a fast food joint. Avoiding cameras is all but impossible. He sits in a far corner of the restaurant until his stomach gets hollow.

He hates eating. Whatever he puts into his mouth is too salty or turns to sawdust on his tongue, leaves his stomach thick and heavy. The scar for the feeding tube healed completely days ago. (_A_ _smell or a taste could bring back a memory, _he remembers someone saying.) He does not miss the slick, cold feeling of fluid rushing into his stomach. The infections when it wasn’t taken care of.

Still, he chokes down something greasy. It might be a hamburger. He barely tastes it, but it leaves a film in his mouth, and he chokes back nausea as he sits in a spot behind the restaurant, facing the woods, pulling in gulps of air. 

The spot is one where the light doesn’t find him, leaves him hidden in the shadows.

Ninety six hours away from his handlers. He still hasn’t slept. He isn’t sure he ever has. He’s only ever felt himself drift into something close to it was because a needle was pressed into his neck, or because he was forced into unconsciousness with the creeping process of cryostasis, freezing air dragging him somewhere far, far off. 

He’s watched others sleep in shelters. Watched a man fall asleep at a bus stop. He shuts his eyes, and his head drops forward.

When he opens them again, the sun is rising. A skinny pale kid with a pimpled face stands above him, wearing the uniform matching the restaurants, and tells him to beat it.

So, he forces his body, stiff and useless, upward and keeps moving.

-

The Asset makes his way through Chantilly. He sleeps in piss covered alleys and park benches and cleans himself in bathrooms. He sits for hours in coffee shops or libraries or anywhere that doesn’t mind him being there, hidden beneath a baseball cap. Someone buys him a sandwich one afternoon. Another day, an employee who knows his face gives him some sort of coffee on the house. Days like that are good.

He gets by, and it takes a week before he grows suspicious. 

A bulky guy with dark hair and a sunburn follows him into a McDonalds. Matches his footsteps with The Asset’s. His clothes are nondescript. Easy to move in. Easy to conceal any weapons. If one isn’t keeping an eye open for a HYDRA goon, they’re all but impossible to spot.

The Asset’s eyes are always open. He is vigilant, constantly and endlessly, but he still cannot be sure if it’s an agent. There’s only one man here. They’d usually send more, or have another waiting outside, but the parking lot is empty. 

Risks can’t be taken now. The Asset slips into the bathroom and jumps out the window. 

He makes it outside. No sign of the guy, but The Asset’s heart is thudding. He’s breathing in humid air, already tasting blood, the rubber of a mouthguard. He sweats beneath his cap, and it beads at his temples. He knows it isn’t the heat.

It could have been nothing. Maybe it was. Maybe. Maybe, but he’s been careless. Stupid. 

He’s stayed in one place for too long already. It’s his own fault if he’s caught.

-

He can’t stop anywhere. Not now.

With panic creeping in on him, he simply keeps walking, feeling more like what he was made to be, rather than whatever he is now. 

Is he human? He looks like everyone else. Hair and skin and a working pair of eyes, but inside, he feels hollowed out. _Cold_. 

_Coldcoldcoldcoldcold. Skin like ice, body turning stiff and weakening and lungs turning to useless husks and he’s falling. Bone crushing. Muscle ripping. Nerves screaming. **I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m—**_

Standing in the middle of an intersection with the sun searing his eyes. Horns filling his ears. His prosthetic aches. It’s never done that before.

Someone shouts at him, tells him to move out of the road. He does, when he remembers how to work his legs; ducking out of sight and pulling his cap low on his brow.

Moments like this almost confirm he’s far from human. More like a machine with a short or a few crossed wires.

-

The Asset has never gone this long without a wipe. 

His handlers were never so careless. Mistakes must have been made in the past, none he can remember, but enough for HYDRA to see it as protocol before and after missions.

Has he ever escaped? Gone rogue and fell off the grid? He feels like he might have. Being untethered feels strangely familiar, and not entirely unwelcome.

He tries hitching, but with no luck. It’s early in the morning and no one has any patience for drifters.

An hour passes. Storm clouds are rolling in and a rusty brown pickup breaks down beside him. A scrawny kid with blond hair and a smart mouth throws himself out, cursing the engine, the road, whatever the hell else pisses him off. He’s ready to kick the side of the truck before The Asset says—

“Your truck broke down.”

The kid turns to look at him. He makes an incredulous sound. “Yeah, thanks, numbnuts, I couldn’t tell,” he snaps. “Got any other brilliant observations?”

“I could fix it,” The Asset says, though he isn’t sure why. He knows he has never fixed a car, but his hands feel accustomed to it. The breakfast he’d had previously wants to rise up his throat with that thought.

The kid’s face goes from curious to suspicious to hopeful, and back to suspicious. “You any good?” he asks. 

The Asset shrugs. “I hope so,” he says.

The kid must take it as sarcasm. He’s not amused, but he’s less angry. He sighs, sets his hands at his hips “Look, I don’t have that much money, but can you please just do me a solid?” he asks, too pleadingly. “I don’t have a lot, maybe fifty bucks cash. I’ll give you what I can but—“

“Move,” The Asset says firmly, and steps to the front of the car. “You got any tools?”

The kid thankfully does, despite the fact that he evidently doesn’t know how to use them. “I’m Joe, by the way,” he says when he hands the bag, made out of worn leather, over. 

The Asset pops the hood open. “Jack,” he says. “This your old man’s?”

“My uncle’s,” Joe clarifies. “He’s a cool guy. Moved out of the country for work, so he gave it to me a couple years back.”

_This one’s going to be a talker. _The Asset hums, and opens the bag. The damage is nothing out of the ordinary, but he doesn’t know how he knows that. 

As he gives everything a once-over, he thinks of a cramped garage and his clothes getting filthy with grime. Dry, cloying heat and coming home to an even warmer, even more cramped apartment. _Lying face down on a rickety sofa, sweaty and sore, and discreetly watching a mess of skin and bones hunched over a table, a pair of long, clever fingers wrapped around a pencil. _

“Hey, you alright over there?” 

Joe’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts, and The Asset nearly bangs his head on the hood of the car. 

“Fine,” The Asset says, voice strangled in his throat. He slams the hood down with too much force. His flesh hand is shaking. He clenches it tightly, until his nails dig crescent dents into his palm, and steps away. “You’re, uh, good to go. Might as well make sure it’s running.”

A moment passes, and Joe is in the driver’s seat and starting the truck. When it sputters and starts up, he throws a thrilled grin at The Asset. The Asset looks away.

“Yes!” Joe shouts, and then leans toward the passengers’ side window,. “Thanks so much, man, I’m...what do I owe you? How much do you want?”

The Asset shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “If you don’t got it, you don’t got it.”

“Aw, come on,” Joe says. “I can’t just leave you with nothing.” 

The Asset squints against the sun. He should have grabbed sunglasses before he left. “If you can give me a ride, I’ll take that.”

Joe turns quiet, then. “I’m,” he says, drums his fingers briefly on the steering wheel. And then he shrugs. “I mean, it depends on where you’re trying to go.”

“Chicago,” The Asset says. It’s a lie, but it isn’t. As long as it’s far away, it’s good enough for him. 

Joe has an unreadable expression on his face. “I’m heading to Cincinnati, dude,” he says. “That’s like, four hours away from where you’re trying to go.”

“Good enough,” The Asset raises his hands up, and it feels unnatural. It’s strange, being unarmed. “I...look, kid, I just need a ride. If you can’t do it, fine. I’m not gonna jump down your throat about it.”

Joe drums his fingers against the wheel, visibly chewing his cheek. “You said your name’s Jack?” he asks.

The Asset never had a name, only aliases. Fake passports and names all corresponding to whoever and whatever he was meant to pose as, but it’s been ages— decades since a mission like that. 

The last name he remembers using is Alexei, but he knows it’s not his real name. He associates it with a freezing Russian winter, lurking in the wings of the Bolshoi Ballet, rifle trained on a doughy, spectacled face in the audience. He was not the important part of the mission. He was backup, the muscle, and the name was stripped from him upon returning to the compound.

The Asset has always been The Asset, and even though a niggling part of him knows that wasn’t always true, it’s been drilled in to the point that it feels like the only truth there is. 

But, Jack keeps sticking. Just like Alexei. They handed him a passport and gave him clothes he was unused to. _Your name is Alexei Kalashnik_, he remembers reminding himself. Remembers staring at the passport for what felt like hours. It was strange seeing his own face. Wherever they decided to keep him, be it Siberia or D.C., the room was always devoid of mirrors. 

If the name felt like it was his then, he can make this his truth, too. He lets the name stick. It feels good. 

“That’s it,” Jack says. “Don’t wear it out.”

A terse moment passes, and then Joe reaches over and opens the door for him. “You do anything weird, and I’m kicking your ass to the curb,” he says. “That’s a promise, alright?”

Jack almost smiles, but he isn’t quite sure why. “Yeah, I got it, hotshot,” he says without thinking, and gets into the truck just as a few raindrops begin to fall. 

-

Once Joe became positive he wasn’t going to be murdered or robbed, he relaxed quickly. 

He hasn’t stopped talking in the four hours they’ve been driving, even if he’s met with less enthusiastic replies; and if he’s not talking, he’s playing music that tears at Jack’s nerves. Hell, he doesn’t even know what he’s listening to, he just knows he can’t stand it. It’s loud enough to drown out the rain pattering against the windshield, against the roof of the truck, along with every single thought in his head.

“Wanna turn that down?” Jack says as a song fades out. 

“Don’t like the music, grandpa?” Joe says with mirth in his voice. “What do you listen to, then?”

“I don’t listen to music.”

“What?” Joe glances at him once, and then turns back to the road. “Jesus, Jack. You seem pretty young to be so— how old are you, anyway?”

Jack isn’t sure. He’s seen himself in the mirror, and he thinks he can’t be more than thirty.

“O-kay, never mind,” Joe says. “You alright, man? You’ve got like, a thousand yard stare.”

“I’ll be fine,” Jack says. “Just gonna try to enjoy the music.”

“Yeah, right,” Joe says, lighter. “Really?”

“No,” Jack says, and when Joe doesn’t respond, “Aren’t you a little young to be picking up hitchhikers?”

”Aren’t you a little young to be such a bitter asshole?”

“You know, for a little punk, you sure got a lot to say,” Jack says. “You like getting punched in the face or something?”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Joe chuckles. “Where are you from, anyway? Definitely not from around here, huh?”

Definitely not. Nothing looks or feels familiar. It would have struck a chord by now. “What makes you say that?” Jack asks. 

Joe shrugs. “You don’t seem like you are,” he says. “And you seem kind of, I dunno. You ex-military or something?”

“Special forces,” Jack says automatically, and Joe cocks an eyebrow.

“Like black ops?” he asks.

Jack isn’t sure what that is. He doesn’t bother asking. “Not much to say about it,” he says. “Classified." 

“Classified, huh? Nice. My old man was military too,” Joe says. “I’ve been thinking about joining myself.”

That pisses Jack off, and he doesn’t know why. “Why the hell would you want to do that?” he says. 

Joe seems to take it as a personal offense, quickly closing off. “There’s nothing here for me. I mean, I’m graduating from VT next year, but I don’t want to stay here and work nine to five. I want to do something that gives me a purpose.”

Jack tries not to roll his eyes. “So, you’re gonna go get yourself killed halfway across the world instead?" he says, shakes his head. “Not worth it.”

“Oh, come on,” Joe says, turning onto an exit. They’re running low on gas. Really damn low. “You’re the soldier here, you’re telling me you didn’t do it to fight for your country?”

_I was **drafted**, kid, _Jack almost says, but he knows he stops himself. It’s not a good answer. Not the right answer. 

“I did what I had to,” Jack says. That’s the truth. “I didn’t choose it. I was good at it, but there’s other ways to pull your weight. Figure something else out.”

“No point in me being here,” Joe says. “Sucking up air, not pulling my weight where I could be needed.” 

“Sure,” Jack says as they pull up to a station, up beside a gas kiosk. “‘Cause you’ve got nothing to prove.”

He gets out before Joe can say anything else. 

-

They’re in the outskirts of Pittsburgh, and the gas station is connected to a mini mart. It’s quiet. No cameras. Just a security guard. He allows himself to relax, just for a moment. 

Jack pays for the gas. If there was any bad blood between Joe and himself, it’s clearly gone quiet for now. Regardless, Jack thinks he’s gonna have to find someone else to drive him. Something about the kid is throwing him off. The stubbornness, the stick-like skinniness, the way he keeps shoving blond bangs out of his eyes.

In a dingy, fluorescent flooded bathroom, Jack splashes his face with water. Shakes the lethargy from his body. He needs to sleep, but he just— he can’t. If anyone’s managed to follow him, he needs to stay vigilant.

That’s what he keeps telling himself.

When he glances into the mirror, he looks as terrible as he feels. Eyes bloodshot. Beard too scruffy. Hair limp and greasy. There’s been a flood of...something in the past few hours, and it’s drained him. 

He ties his hair back and ducks out before he can spare it any more thought, face still damp. The lights are even brighter in the store, straining his eyes as he heads for the door. Joe appears from seemingly nowhere, and Jack almost elbows him in the throat.

“Woah,” Joe says, and puts his hands up. “Sorry. Anyway, I don’t know what you like to eat, so I was just gonna grab...”

A sleek SUV pulls into the station. Whatever Joe says is lost. Jack’s head feels like it’s been forced underwater.

It’s no coincidence. It’s never a coincidence when it comes to him. 

Jack rounds on Joe. “You need to go,” he says quickly. “Get the hell out of here.”

Blond brows knit together. “What?” Joe says. “Look, I don’t mind driving you further, if that’s what this is—“

A slam of a car door. Two more follow. “Not what it’s about,” Jack says, keeps his eyes on the door. “Just do it, alright? Trust me on this. You don’t want to be here.” 

Joe follows Jack’s gaze, and then turns to him. “Classified?” he asks, too seriously. 

“Something like that,” Jack says, already slinking further into the store. “Get out of here. Don’t pay ‘em any mind.”

Surprisingly, Joe does. From the corner of his eye, Jack can see him step out as three men step in. He starts the truck, and drives away.

If they continued any further, they would have been ran off the road. Or Joe would have had his brains splattered over the interior of his truck. Perhaps that can be avoided. The last thing Jack needs is some kid’s blood on his hands. 

As if there isn’t enough already. 

He makes it back toward the bathroom as the three agents step further into the store. One is wiry and thin, the other is massive. Jack’s blood runs cold at the sight of the third. 

Dark hair, faded sunburn, but definitely the guy from Chantilly.

Jack was right for running, but he wasn’t fast enough. Wasn’t discreet enough. He’s losing his sharpness.

He steps backward. No vantage points. Nowhere to hide conveniently. He shuts himself in a stall and climbs upward, ducking down with his feet braced on either side of the toilet seat, his knife in his fist.

The window isn’t even a window. It’s a slot. There is no side door. A supply closet will lead him nowhere. There has to be a back entrance. 

There has to be a way out. 

The bathroom door creaks open.

Silence won’t help him here, though, not when he’s cornered like an animal. Not when they already know he’s here. They want to catch him off guard. They think they know his every move, but he’ll always be faster than them. Stronger.

That’s why they made him, wasn’t it? If a HYDRA agent was killed during a mission, The Winter Soldier was there to finish the job with flying colors. 

Slow, measured footsteps, and then the furthest stall door furthest from him slams open. Jack’s knife isn’t much. It’s too small for a clean kill. It’s for quick, bloody work, but it isn’t the only thing he’s relying on.

He slips under the crack in the door soundlessly, standing to full height, and doesn’t wait to be noticed. 

Sunburn has no time to react when Jack grabs his throat, prosthetic whirring violently. “How,” he says before he can stop himself. “Did you find me?” 

The guy’s face is turning blotchy and violet already, fruitlessly pulling at Jack’s fingers. He doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. His throat spasms under Jack’s palm.

Anger, dark and boiling, claws its way up from Jack’s stomach, and he bashes Sunburn’s head against the sink with a dull thunk and a satisfying crunch. He does it a second time for good measure, and a chunk of porcelain falls, missing the slow ooze of blood spreading over the concrete floor. 

He reaches to Sunburn’s side and takes his gun, the spare magazine from his holster. The tension scratching within his chest ceases only slightly as he slips the magazine in his pocket, tucks the gun into his waistband.

Jack steps out just as two silenced gunshots fill the air. Two bodies thump to the floor, one after the other.

The clerk and the guard are dead, brains and blood spattered on the windows, on the counter. The gun is heavy against the flesh of Jack’s hip, and his fingers itch for it when he feels movement somewhere behind him.

That’s when a wire wraps around his throat. 

Whoever it is has an iron grip, and the wire cuts into Jack’s skin viciously. His head buzzes, lungs aching with the need for air. His feet feel strangely light as he’s dragged backward, vision turning splotchy. 

“Get the door,” the agent holding him says, and Jack’s brain seems to kick back to life. _You can’t go back. You can’t get caught. Going back will be the end of the rope, they’ll make sure of that. _

He elbows the agent in the stomach to no avail, then opts for his groin. It works fine enough. He twists around when the agent’s grip loosens and kicks him backward, boot connecting square with his chest. 

It should have left him flying back, but he only stumbles back a few feet. HYDRA is making their guys stronger. Jack pulls his gun as the agent bounds forward, and does what they made him for. 

He shoots twice without thinking. Chest. Throat.

The second agent, the wiry one with a red buzzcut, fires his own gun. One, miss. Two, miss. Three—

Jack stumbles back as the third hits him, buries itself in his side.

It’s not the first bullet, and it won’t be the last. He barely notices the pain as he rolls out of sight. 

He ducks behind a coffee counter, back pressing against a shelf. His lungs are burning, hip oozing blood. Nothing fatal. The healing process will begin soon, but it’s easy to pretend it’s worse than it is. 

Buzzcut is coming closer closer, so Jack lets himself be heard, allows his breath to turn ragged as he tightens his grip on his gun.

Let him think Jack is incapacitated. Let him come over thinking that he was the one to take Jack down. Buzzcut’s footsteps are slow, heavy, and smug.

The moment he comes around the counter and opens his mouth to speak, Jack pulls the trigger.

\- 

The store is left in a mess of blood and bodies. Jack steals a first aid kit, any essentials he might need, and the leftover cash from the register, from the bodies scattered across the floor. 

He now has $1040 and a gunshot wound soaking through his shirt. 

Jack holes himself in the bathroom again, and he digs the bullet from his side with a pair of tweezers. Bites back his screams with his knife between his teeth. It’s deeper than he thought, but he doesn’t have time for stitches. He bandages it tightly. _Nothing fatal_, he reminds himself again. He’ll heal. He always does.

When Captain America broke his arm, the bones mended themselves in within hours. 

Jack’s strides are long and determined when he steps out, even with the pain blooming up his side. He grits his teeth against it, sweat beading at his temples, at the nape of his neck, cooled by the air outside, stinking of blood and gasoline. 

Where is he supposed to go now? A hospital? A clinic? _No hospitals. No, no, no_. _White coats everywhere and clean, clinical smells, latex covered hands at his face. The whir of something—_

Even without cameras, someone is bound to pass by and see what happened. HYDRA could be tracking their agents, tracking the SUV they came in. Other agents might get here before any witnesses do. 

“How’s life on the road treating you, soldier?” a clipped, clear voice asks. Female. American, but her accent sounds off, the way Jack’s does sometimes.

A getaway driver. Of course, they had one. Jack curses to himself, and turns around slowly. 

He doesn’t answer, so the agent continues, stepping closer. Her face is bare. Her blonde hair, slick against her head, appears almost white in the light of the gas station. 

“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” she says. “I’m here to do one job, and that’s bringing you back.”

“Bring me back where?” Jack asks. His voice is low and caught in his chest. Every breath leaves him aching. “Triskelion’s gone. Anyone who’s anyone is dead.”

“Not everyone,” she says, taking a step closer. “Not me. And you should know better than anyone that HYDRA never really falls.”

Jack’s hip is throbbing. “Cut one head off, and two more take its place.”

The agent smiles almost serenely. “Precisely,” she says. “Now, you can either come quietly, or I can take you back my way. Your choice.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Jack says. His fingers itch for his gun, but the agent looks too quick for that.

“You’re _injured_, soldier,” she says impatiently, like she’s speaking to an unruly child. “You’ll die out here. Alone. Defenseless. Take this as a kindness and do as you’re told.”

“Fuck you,” Jack spits, and god, it feels _good, _but that’s all it takes to set her off. 

The agent fires and hits Jack in the shoulder. He expects to see more blood, to feel the bullet dig into the meat of his shoulder, but a black dart is sticking out of his clothes. Barely a pinch.

Tranquilizer. 

If Jack wasn’t injured, he’d be able to fight it off quickly, but he knows it’s too much. His body is in overdrive, trying to flush the drug out, burning his energy off to heal the wound in his side. 

There’s a stronghold in Newark. He’s been to it. Jesus, five hours away. The agent could get him there without fail if he doesn’t play his cards right.

He has at least a minute until the drug really takes root in his bloodstream. The agent might not know that. 

So, Jack lets himself fall— maybe too quickly, but it’s enough to get the agent to come closer. He doesn’t let his eyes close fully, doesn’t allow himself the risk of actually giving in.

She kneels down, presumably to make sure he’s actually falling unconscious. She reaches for her phone quickly, clicking a single button and pressing it to her ear before Jack can get to her. 

Too fast. She’s too fast._ This is bad. Real fucking bad, pal._

“I’ll be on my way back alone, but I have him,” the agent says, and a wave of sickness hits Jack like another bullet. His feet feel numb. “We’ll be there before midnight.” 

When she hangs up the phone, Jack wraps his fingers around her throat.

His vision blurs, but his grip doesn’t falter. Layers upon layers of cartilage crack in his grip. His arm whirs, plates shifting in his wrist as her neck breaks, snaps beneath his fingers. 

He pushes her away, and her body hits the ground with a thud. Jack crushes the phone—a burner, old and cheap— beneath his boot.

And then he runs. 

He runs as far as he can on his shaking legs, detouring into the woods as the trees blur around him. Fresh blood soaks into his shirt, into his sweatshirt, and then his body gives out completely. 

The drug claims him, hard and fast. Tugs him down into cold blankness and numbs his body before he can wonder if his wounds will close in time.

-

Light reflects through his closed eyelids. He doesn’t want to open them.

A part of him expects to see a harsh spotlight in his eyes. To see white coats and hear hushed voices and feel cuffs around his wrists, the press of two plates on either side of his— 

Jack opens his eyes. The sun immediately burns them. He’s never felt more relieved.

He tugs the dart from his shoulder with rubbery fingers, and tugs his shirt upward. His skin is covered in dried, dark blood, and he lifts the bandage a little. The wound has closed; surrounded by raw, pink skin. Itchy as hell.

A fluke, definitely. He’s lucky he isn’t dead, but now, a part of him wonders if he can die at all.

He hopes so. 

If he can swallow a bullet before HYDRA or anyone else gets their hands on him, it might stop all of this in its tracks.

It takes too much effort to pull himself up, to zip his sweatshirt, and then his jacket. If he’s going to go anywhere near town, the last thing he needs is a cop on him, too.

\- 

Jack cleans his wounds in a motel room. He washes his clothes in the bathtub and hangs them on the shower rod to dry. The room is $40 per night. He isn’t sure how long he’ll stay, but he doesn’t think he can stay out in the open much longer. Too many people have seen his face now.

He sleeps for the first time, and with the tranquilizer still slugging through his system, he drifts off quickly.

-

_The darkness around him is heavy, and it almost feels alive._

_It’s difficult to move, to breathe, and his limbs feel frozen in place for a moment, but then he opens his eyes, and the sky is bright with stars. It’s freezing, but he’s sat down on hard cobblestone, numb fingers are wrapped around a bottle he knows won’t get him drunk. _

_The eyes he’s seeing through are not his own, but the weariness weighing him down is. The memory of pain buzzing through his bones, needles in his skin is most certainly his own._

_His face is reflected in a shop window, but it’s warped. Strange. It looks right, but it looks wrong, too. A pair of footsteps fill the silence before he can give it any more thought. _

_“I lost track of you inside.” The voice is warm, familiar. It leaves Jack hollow and sick. “You okay?”_

_Jack shrugs and takes a swig of beer. He can’t bring himself to look up. Maybe because he won’t allow himself to. “Got crowded in there,” he says. “Needed some air.” _

_He looks ahead, The streets aren’t meant to be filled with the dead, yet they are. Just for a moment. Rotting bodies in piles, the smell of death thick on Jack’s tongue. _

_He isn’t sure if that’s meant to happen here. He doesn’t think so._

_Whoever followed him out sits beside him, knee bumping against his own, an arm pressing against his own. **They’re always tangled together.** Sleeping back to back. Sitting with a near constant touch. A brush of fingers, a hand at the nape of a neck. Never knowing where one ends and the other begins. _

_It’s peaceful, it’s miserable, and it’s almost intoxicating. The gentle squeeze to his knee is probably meant to be steadying. Jack’s ashamed to say it is._

_He allows himself relax into it. The streets have returned to their original state. The brief pulse of content filling his chest is not his own, but he still thinks he could stay here for another hundred years or so._

_“Hey.” Squeeze to Jack’s knee. “You with me?”_

_The words leave his—Jack’s, the real flesh and blood Jack’s—skin crawling, but he’s not in control of his body here, so he shrugs. “Nowhere else for me to go, pal.”_

_A lull in the conversation. Not entirely unpleasant, but the heaviness is so prominent he can feel it like sweat soaking his skin. It’s a relief when it breaks._

_He’s supposed to say something here. He isn’t sure what, but the scene is shifting. There’s a bed beneath him now, and he’s pressed up against a body, the phantom of want brimming low in his gut. _

_Jack thinks about boiling Arizona sun, and it beat the half frozen mud of the camps, beat London’s wet cold that seemed to seep through into his bones._

_“When this is all over,” he mumbles against someone’s cheek. They smell like soap and aftershave. Jack is tired but it’s not unpleasant. He feels heavy and sated. “I’m gonna take you somewhere warm. Somewhere real nice. And then, we’re not gonna do a goddamn thing, you hear me? Sit on our asses till they hurt. Not gonna think about nothing. Not gonna do nothing.”_

_There’s no future here. Jack knows that. They both do. “Where would we go?” the other guy asks._

_“Pick it and we’ll go,” Jack says._

_“Nuh-uh. Dealer’s choice.” _

_Jack feels stupid saying it at all, but the words spill out of his mouth. “All right,” he said, pausing before adding, “Wouldn’t mind seeing the Grand Canyon. Always thought about it.”_

_He sneaks a glance at the guy, and catches a flash of blond. A smile, faint and waning. Something is missing here. Jack can feel it. His chest vibrates with it, and a pair of blue eyes land on him, something raw and surprised and gentle trapped in the bottom of them._

Jack makes the mistake of blinking, and it all disappears. 

He wakes with a forgotten word on his lips. Burnt orange sunlight streaks across the ceiling, and he reaches for a body that isn’t there, fingers curling around cold sheets.

-

With sleep still weighing him down, he scribbles the details of the dream in a notebook emblazoned with the motel’s logo. He writes it down until he has to wrack his brain for even the smallest detail. 

It doesn’t give him peace of mind, but it’s helpful to remember for once. To remember something that doesn’t make him feel like his brain is being set on fire.

He tries in vain to get back to sleep as the morning drones on. When he finally does, it’s restless. The room is filled with buttery yellow sunlight, and the dream is replaced with a cloying emptiness that wants to eat him alive. 

The clock blinks almost aggressively. _7:15_. Somewhere, distantly, a train blares its horn. 

Skin crawling, bones aching, he forces himself from the bed. 

-

Jack grabs clothes and a backpack from a Wal-Mart up the highway, hidden under his cap, avoiding the cameras. He’s switched the first out for a plain grey one, and he only buys what he doesn’t mind spending. He doesn’t go back. He has underwear, a few shirts, a sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and washing powder. That’s more than enough.

He lives off of whatever he can buy from the convenience store or the vending machine just outside his room, and stays awake until he passes out.

A routine develops: wake up, shower, eat, sleep. He speaks to no one unless he has to. He’s unused to the sound of his voice again, the vibration of it in his throat. Not talking at all is preferable.

The curtains remain closed. He leaves only when he has to, and only with the cover of night. Otherwise, he stays in his room. It smells of mothballs and the sheets are like sandpaper, but it beats being out in the open. 

Three days have passed. Three days, and four agents dead only a mile away. Someone has to be sniffing around by now. He considers this through a mouthful of toothpaste before he spits it out and lets it swirl down the drain. 

The news drones on, loud enough that he can barely hear himself think. Washington is still in shambles. SHIELD and HYDRA have been cracked wide open. Decades of classified information leaked, same as yesterday. A rising body count, same as yesterday. 

When he steps out of the bathroom, Steve Rogers' face is plastered on the screen, and Jack barely hears the anchorwoman. He shuts the TV off so hard he might end up breaking the damn thing. 

-

Jack dreams again, but it’s a mess. Chaotic fragments of blood and steel and a view through a 50 millimeter scope. This, he knows. Knows it down to his very bones, even as the world shifts around him with every decade that passes. 

The world changes, but the people do not. And everyone is the same when they’re dead. 

When he pulled Rogers from the Potomac, he considered killing him to prove that theory. Even someone like him could rot in a grave somewhere, but Jack doesn’t think he’ll be the one to put him there.

Maybe, a part of him knows why, a visceral part of him ruled solely by whatever HYDRA tried to wipe away. But, Jack still can’t look at the guy’s face without feeling something ugly and twisting rising up his chest. 

It’s not hatred, it’s not fear or disgust, but something of its own breed. Something Jack doesn’t want to think about. He doesn’t want to give it a name.

\- 

He loses track easily now. Loses track of everything. 

Time. Thoughts. Memories of even the most recent things. 

He forgets his name. He forgets how he ended up in Pennsylvania. He spends two days convinced that he’s remembered everything, that his name really _is_ Alexei Kalashnik, and he grew up in Veliky Novgorod, that he might has family there who remember him, but that makes no sense. He wouldn’t feel a connection to America. English wouldn’t feel right in his mouth. 

Then, he’s struck with the fear that he’s been in cryosleep for all of this, until he remembers it’s impossible to dream there. His paranoia grows like a tumor, and he sleeps with his gun— easy to grab, easy to fire if anyone crashes through his door or the window.

No one comes. Three days pass, and Jack’s nerves ease only slightly before they flare back up entirely. He can’t leave the TV on without seeing the Triskelion, the helicarriers and the wreckage. Today, it’s all conspiracies. The why’s, the how’s, the list of the dead.

And then, a photo of him. 

_An unknown assailant assumed to be doing HYDRA’s dirty work_, they say. 

It’s a blur, it’s CCTV footage, but it’s _him_. Nothing covering his face. No one’s ever seen his face before, HYDRA made sure of that, and then everything was leaked for the world to see.

By sunset, he scrubs the room of fingerprints as best as he can and checks out. 

-

Going out in public makes Jack feel like jumping out of his skin now, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. Living in a motel room is neither smart nor safe. He can’t stay in one place for too long. Not if more info, not if more details about him are unearthed.

He finds a Greyhound station, and spends $200 on a ticket to Flagstaff, Arizona. It won’t arrive for hours, and he’ll be on a bus for at least two days, squished in with dozens of people. Eyes on him, bodies brushing his own. 

But, hiding in plain sight is easier. If Jack is surrounded by other people, he’ll be harder to spot. He knows that from experience. He tells himself that over and over again.

Stealing becomes easier. In the station, he swipes a book, just to give himself something to stare at aside from the floor. He eats food that tastes slightly better than the junk he’s been eating and becomes aware of the hollowness in his stomach, the fact that his clothes are a little looser than they were a week ago.

At half-past three in the morning, the bus arrives. It’s only Jack, and four other people. He sits toward the back, his backpack between his knees, and watches Pittsburgh fade away. 

The highway flies by. The sun rises. He does not sleep. 

-

He does fall in and out of something like unawareness halfway through the journey, once the bus has become a little more full. He only rises to relieve himself a few times, but no one speaks to him, and he speaks to no one. 

When they reach Ohio, he allows himself to shut his eyes, just for a few minutes, but he wakes in Missouri, feeling a little better than before.

No dreams this time. Just a slow, soothing darkness. Things are suspiciously quiet. He doesn’t like it. 

-

A transfer. Hours of traveling. A baby cries almost all the way to Arizona, but when the bus finally arrives, something settles in Jack’s chest. The air is warm and dry, and a sense of isolation surrounds the place. 

Another motel. Cheaper. Dirtier. The bed is lumpy and the shower isn’t as hot as it should be, but it doesn’t bother him. No one looks him in the eye. In fact, no one pays him any mind at all. 

The knot in his shoulders loosens. He might be able to breathe for a while. 

-

Ten days pass by in a blur.

Jack doesn’t sleep any better or show his face unless he has to, but Flagstaff is nicer than Chantilly. It’s nicer than Pittsburgh. The air isn’t humid and doesn’t choke him. It’s dry and crisp and hot. It feels good on his skin, and he isn’t so pale now.

At night, it turns freezing, but the sky isn’t cloudy with pollution. It’s bright and clear and filled with stars. 

The Grand Canyon is one hour away.

He still has his first dream written down, folded in a pocket in his backpack. A chaotic scribble of events that he can barely make sense of, but it sharpens now. Turns to something he might be able to understand. 

Maybe coming out here was intentional. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe somewhere this quiet is easy to hide. Maybe he wants an answer and this might be a way of finding a part of one. 

His mind is a fragmented, murky mess. A swirling void of voices and sounds and smells and memories he can’t grasp at no matter how hard he tries.

HYDRA wanted him to associate remembering with pain, with suffering, and he knows that. He knows it in his bones, but it doesn’t make letting go any easier.

-

There’s a twenty-four hour diner across the road. Jack has taken to spending his nights there when he can’t bear with being cooped in the motel. 

Initially, he only orders to avoid being kicked out, drinking lukewarm coffee for hours. He tries to switch it out for tea one night. It’s bland and flowery and his body and brain say _no_. 

He quickly switches it out for coffee, and after that, makes it a mission to figure out how to eat without choking back the urge to vomit, how to order food because he wants it rather than needs it. 

Over a few days, he learns that he hates cream cheese. He hates jelly. He hates turkey. He hates orange juice, and he hates pulpy orange juice more than anything.

Figuring out what he likes is harder, but definitely better. He orders pancakes when he can stomach it, soaks them with syrup and butter, or he orders a BLT.

It’s time consuming, and it’s dipping into his funds, but it helps. It helps to learn things about himself now, rather than who he might have been before. 

-

The diner becomes a part of his routine. He sits in a booth toward the back, armed with a pad and three pens, a mug of coffee, and gets to work. 

He has a code, easy enough for him to remember. Green ink for good memories, or memories that make sense. Black for the blank spots or neutral territory. Red for bad memories. 

Jack tries to piece things together using the memories he’s had in the past...month? Has it been that long? He isn’t sure. He isn’t sure he knows anything, lately. Everything started off so clearly and now, now he—

It always leaves him hitting a wall. When he looks back at the notes, they’re indecipherable. A mess of color and words that almost rivals the nonsense twisting around in his brain. 

He leaves at sunrise, without fail, every single time, with a throbbing headache and more questions.

-

_There’s a hole in his head, and his brain is spilling out of it. _

_Why? How?_

_A drill? A scalpel?** A drill**. Pressing through his temple before he ran. _

_The corridors are endless and twisting and **bright bright too bright can’t see can’t think have to go have to run**. He doesn’t know where to go. He’s never been this far out of the building. Legs are getting weaker, knees buckling beneath him. There’s blood on his hands and it’s not his own. A clock shows the date and time and it’s hard to look at. It’s impossible, it’s—it’s—_

_It’s November 25th, 1950. _

_The signs are in Russian, but he can understand them. He doesn’t speak Russian, does he? No, he can’t. Tongue doesn’t get around it right. Doesn’t speak anything because he could never wrap his head around it because he **can’t speak not allowed jaw was broken wired shut teeth hurt where am i where am i think think think think think. **_

_Cold air. A metal door. He breaks it with ease. More blood. More screaming. Trees, trees, trees everywhere and covered in snow. Feet numb, face numb, it’s cold. So cold. He grabs at a pair of shoulders, looks into a face he can’t see. Someone should be looking for him. Why hasn’t anyone come?_

_“Помоги мне,” he grunts, clutches at a uniform. His tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth. Losing blood. Fingers turning floppy and useless. **come on buck come on buck**. “Помоги мне товарищ прошу, тебя. Помилуй меня, помилуй меня!“_

_The guard only shoves him away, disgusted. Like he’s a mangy animal. Four arms grab at him before he can fall into the snow. His vision flashes, swims with stars and colors._

_He spits. It dribbles down his chin and tastes of blood. The guard laughs and says, “Вернись на свой пост, солдат.”_

_A cattle prod crackles to life before his eyes._

_And then heat is exploding through his bones, melting his skin, and he’s screaming, screaming, screaming, piss running down his legs, choking on bile. **Don’t get lost try to remember don’t let them take it again don’t lose it again. **_

_Heart in overdrive. Beating too quickly. Pounding in an endless staccato. It might stop. He hopes it does. He wishes it does. He wishes they’d think he’s useless and leave him for dead in the snow, but they won’t let him die. He wishes his head caught the rocks in the Alps. He wishes he reached further, but he’s stuck, he’s—_

Screaming. 

Screaming so loud his throat feels like it’s bleeding and he can’t _stop_. Someone in the next room over bangs on the wall hard and fast, right against his head. It’s gunshots blaring through his brain and he claps his hands over his ears. 

The voice from the room next door is muffled, but clear enough. Walls are too damn thin. “SHUT THE FUCK UP IN THERE!” 

<strike>The Asset</strike> <strike>The Sergeant</strike> <strike>Jack</strike> <strike>Bucky</strike> <strike>James</strike> <strike>Jack</strike> He does. 

_Think._ Where is he? 

Green walls. Bed. _Sit up_. Tangled in something. Fabric. The room is dark. A TV is blaring but he can’t understand it. His brain is scrambled eggs. _Not again not again not again please no more please please please. _

Hair is wet. Cryo? _No_. A shower. Heat. Soap. Soap that smells like...he isn’t sure. Something warm and familiar. There’s ink on his flesh fingers. Ink on someone else’s fingers, too but that’s wrong, that’s not here, he knows that. It might be a memory. A _memory_.

_Remember. You’re allowed to remember._

A bus. Stars. _The desert is cold at night, and blazing during the day. _He is in Flagstaff and he is alone.

Alone. _You’re okay. Look alive, kid. _

Jack buries his head into his hands and tries not to think. It takes hours for his pulse to slow, for his body to stop shaking.

-

Jack doesn’t get out of bed for almost two days. He’s hollow with hunger, shaky with nerves, but just thinking about getting up makes him edgy. 

He can’t sleep. He doesn’t allow himself to. He only drifts somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, fighting off the nausea coating his insides. 

Sleeping is not an option. Every time Jack shuts his eyes, the world turns white and grey and too bright. The room smells clinical and cold. 

Avoiding it is bad, acknowledging is worse. He can’t seem to win.

There’s a sharp, niggling pain just behind his eyes and he flops onto his back, presses the heels of his hands up against his eye sockets, tries to push it away, but he already knows this is far from over. It’s only going to bring on another dream, whether he sleeps or not. 

Memories, thoughts, whatever the hell they are, are going to eat him alive until nothing else remains, and it’s this that makes him realize he is, in fact, human. 

If Jack were the soldier HYDRA made him to be, he wouldn’t feel anything. He wouldn’t think. He wouldn’t speak unless spoken to. They wouldn’t have had to wipe him after every single mission, or keep him sedated or floating in cryo when they had no use for him. 

Details like that tell a story, a story he’s sure he could learn if he were able to put it together, to learn more than the scattered chaos his dreams show him. 

-

Jack begins to smell himself. Grease sits heavily in his hair, so he showers. He shaves, uses the cheap electric razor he picked up. It doesn’t make him feel or look any better. There are still shadows beneath his eyes, his face is still gaunt and hollow from not eating enough. 

He thinks about shaving his head but he decides against it. For now, he needs a sense of familiarity when looking into the mirror, and changing his appearance now will only make him more noticeable, especially since people have gotten used to his presence.

-

He forces himself to go outside. He buys water from the vending machine, and goes to the front desk, takes a flyer from a shelf of brochures.

** _‘GRAND CANYON SHUTTLE, FREE TO HOTEL GUESTS. EXPERIENCE THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF OUR BLESSED COUNTRY!’_**

-

“We’re out of white, but I brought rye,” the waitress says and sets Jack’s order down. She arches a dark brow at him. “Haven’t seen you in a few days. Thought you might’ve skipped town.”

“Nope,” Jack says, and tries to keep his expression open when he looks up at her. “Still here, still need coffee.”

A slight smile. Not the tight, too-polite one strangers give him. “Well, that’s why I’m here,” she—Jack glances to her name tag. Maggie— Maggie says. She’s waited on him every single time he’s come in. A kid. Might be eighteen, might be less than that. “Let me know if you need anything else, ‘kay?”

Jack doesn’t have his notebook this time, just the paperback he bought at the bus station. Some pulp novel with a shoestring plot, but it’s better than thinking right now. He only got through a few pages on the bus, and hasn’t touched it since.

He puts a few creamers and sugar in his coffee this time, because it tastes better that way. That doesn’t feel like something he’s just now noticed. It’s familiar. He doesn’t know why he’s drank it plain for so long because it tastes like—

_“Yeah, it does too taste like ass! Can’t you fix it up a little? Jesus. I don’t know how you drink it like that.”_

_“I don’t got a sweet tooth like you do, Barnes,” a face made of fog said._

_“Just try it, huh?” Jack slid the cup toward him, and it was quickly slid back._

_“I’ll pass. I don’t want whatever germs you’re carrying.”_

_Whoever it was hated sugar. Hated anything sweet. Jack thinks he said, “That’s why you’re such an asshole.” And <strike>Steve</strike> whoever the guy was had laughed at that, and coughed and laughed again, and Jack wanted to kiss his stupid face but instead he stuck paper into his straw and blew it at him. Hit him square in the forehead._

“...leaving, right? Hello?”

Jack jumps. _Jesus_. Right. Diner. No one else is here. The booth across from him is empty.

No one aside from Maggie, turned tomato red. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says.

He paid his check ($9.50, suspiciously cheap) a little while ago. They don’t usually rush him out. Hell, they barely look his way because he actually orders shit and tips decently enough.

He scrubs a hand over his face. He needs to sleep. “Fine,” Jack grinds out. “It’s fine.”

“You’re clearing out, right?” Maggie asks, just low enough for Jack to hear. She had her jacket on, her bag on her shoulder. “I just mean, it’s half past five, and well, I know you usually leave around now.” 

Jack doesn’t get the point of this. He shrugs, shakes his head. “Uh-huh,” he says, and Maggie looks fidgety. “Am I overstaying my welcome or something?” 

“No!” Maggie says quickly, arms crossed. “Not that. It’s just...you see that guy over there?”

Jack’s heart drops, just slightly. “Which guy?” 

“End of the counter, near the bathroom,” Maggie says. Jack glances at him once. Late thirties, scraggly brown beard and short, unkempt hair under a beanie.

No weapons Jack can see. Not HYDRA. Not SHIELD. Not anyone. If he was an agent, or hell, an assassin, he would have done something by now. Gotten rid of any witnesses.

From what Jack can see, he’s just a creep. 

Maggie’s voice snaps him from his thoughts. “Lonnie. He’s here every night, too, but he’s weird. Keeps talking to me. Asking for me to wait on him. I dunno, he’s giving the creeps tonight. Real bad,” she says. “I feel like he’s been staring me down this whole time.”

Another glance. He is. Jack looks back at her. “Okay,” Jack says. “What do you want me to do? Can’t just walk up to the guy and deck him.”

That breaks the tension. Just a little. Maggie lets out a quiet, shaky laugh. “Nah,” she says. “But...can you just walk me to my car? Please? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t know you.” 

Maggie doesn’t know him. She sees Jack for a couple hours a night, and he barely talks to her. This is the longest conversation they’ve ever had. 

The animal part of him thinks it’s a trap. But first off, Maggie’s about ninety pounds soaking wet, and Jack’s seen her enough times to know she’s no harm. She’s probably really just exactly as she appears, a scared kid who doesn’t want to walk out of here on her own. 

Second, if this goes south somehow, he has his gun in his jacket and his knife in his boot. 

“Look, if you don’t want to, it’s—“

“It’s fine,” Jack says, and slides out of the booth. “Just come on.”

“Holy shit,” Maggie says, nods. “Yeah, okay. Thanks. Thanks so much, Jack.”

The bell on the door rings when she pulls it open. Jack walks out behind her, and a wave of warm air hits him. Fills his nose with the smell of sagebrush and exhaust. 

Another cloudless night, stars peppering the sky. It would be peaceful for anyone else, but Jack can taste blood in his mouth. Something isn’t right.

“Where’s your car?” Jack asks.

Maggie’s walking close to him, back straight as a soldier’s. “Back of the lot,” she says, glances at him once. “Thanks again, by the way.”

“You know,” Jack says. “Working this late isn’t a good idea, kid. Place like this is kind of a beacon for weirdos.”

Maggie makes a ‘pfft’ sound at that. “You can say that again,” she says. “You’re not a weirdo, though.”

Jack almost laughs at that. “See, now you’re just kissing ass,” he says, and she laughs a little. “I sit in the same damn booth every night for hours, don’t eat the food I order, and book it right after. Sounds weird to me.”

“All right, fine, you’re a character, but you don’t seem like a creeper,” Maggie says. “I can sniff ‘em out pretty fast. You seem like an okay guy. Nice enough to walk a girl to her car.”

“Got three sisters back in Brooklyn,” Jack says, but...no. No, he doesn’t. He’s positive he doesn’t. “Guess I wouldn’t mind someone doing the same for them.” 

“How the hell does a guy from Brooklyn end up here?”

Jack opens his mouth to answer her, but a pair of footsteps fill his ears. 

_You’ve gotta be kidding me. _

The guy from the counter—what was his name again? Lonnie?—is standing a few feet away, but his eyes are on Maggie, barely glancing Jack’s way. “Hey, where you going?” he asks. “Heading home?”

“Son of a _bitch_,” Maggie grits out, and then looks toward Lonnie. “Look—“

“Leave her alone, pal,” Jack says, and takes a step in front of her. “Just walk away. Don’t need any trouble tonight.”

“That so? Well, I don’t give a shit what you say,” Lonnie says, and points to Maggie. “I wanna hear it from her.”

“Well, tough,” Jack says. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.” 

“You want me to leave you alone, honey?” Lonnie asks loudly, as if Jack hasn’t spoke at all. He grinds his teeth together tightly. “That it?”

Jack turns to Maggie, who’s gone grey, eyes set somewhere on the ground. “Get in your car,” he says. “Go home. I’ve got this.”

She makes a sour face, crosses her arms over her chest. “I dunno, Jack, maybe I should just—“ 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

“You got the balls to say no but you don’t got the balls to speak up for yourself?” Lonnie continues on. “Gonna let this fucker speak for you instead?”

He strides closer, and Jack stops him in his tracks, right palm pressing to his chest. His prosthetic whirs faintly when he clenches his fist. “Turn around,” Jack says, low in his chest. “And walk away. Last chance.” 

Lonnie nods slowly. “Last chance, huh?” he says. “And what are you gonna do if I don’t, _prick_?” 

He punctuates it with a shove to Jack’s shoulder, but it does nothing. His expression twitches uncomfortably. 

“I’m kind of having a good day,” Jack says simply. “Don’t really feel like screwing it up.” 

“I do.”

Lonnie swings once, aiming for Jack’s jaw, but he’s too slow. Jack seizes his fist in his left hand and twists, the bones snap with an audible crunch and Lonnie makes a strangled noise. _Oops._

That doesn’t mean he isn’t determined, his left comes at Jack’s nose, so Jack slams a fist into his for good riddance. It spurts thick blood and he chokes on it.

That definitely wasn’t an accident.

Jack grabs Lonnie by throat with his flesh hand. “Walk _away_,” he says again. “You come back, I’ll do a lot worse.”

He shoves him, hard enough that Lonnie falls, rolls a foot or so away and lands on his back. He pulls himself up, sparing Jack one final glance before he limps across the lot. 

Something animal in Jack’s chest loosens, and dissipates.

“Ho-ly _shit_!” Maggie shouts, breaking through the thick silence, through the smog in his head. 

Jack whips his head toward her. She’s grinning but still shaking, and...she looks different. Just for a second. Different hair and eyes and _that’s not Maggie. That’s—god, what’s her name? _

And then he blinks, and Maggie is herself again. 

“Check out Flagstaff’s personal Avenger over here. Don’t need a hammer or a shield when you’ve got Over Easy Jack!”

That makes him twitch, but he swallows it down. Shrugs. “Least he won’t be hanging around anymore,” Jack says, and then cocks a brow, a wry smile on his mouth. “And Over Easy Jack? You couldn’t come up with anything else other than how I take my eggs?” 

Maggie cackles at that. “I’ll think of something else,” she says, and unlocks her car. “And that’s _only_ if I can come up with something better. See you tomorrow, Jack.”

He watches her drive away, and then he walks back to the motel, fingers itching for a pen, brain struggling to picture a face. Conjure up a name. 

With a soft click, Jack shuts the door. 

It’s like a fuse is clicked back on. 

The sun is rising high when he finally scribbles _REBECCA_, in bright green ink. 

\- 

A sister. No, _sisters_. He has— he _had_ sisters.

How many? Three. 

_Right? _

Rebecca, with a big mouth and a decent right hook thanks to Jack. Smart as a whip, with dark wavy hair. Jack thinks of her with two missing front teeth, and then older, as pretty and mean as his ma. Jesus, he has a _mother._

Then there was Dorothy— Dottie. Short and perpetually pissed off for such a little kid, a tough nut to crack, but sweeter than Becca. And then, and then there was... 

What was her name? 

He can’t remember. Can’t recall. It was a nickname, same like his. No one called any of them by their names. _You don’t have a name, soldier._

She was the youngest, he knows that, but she didn’t—God, she was—

Blood and sick everywhere. The apartment smelled like death before she even—

_Casket. Burial. Becca and Dottie are so young. They won’t remember much, but Jack will, since twelve is too old to forget. His ma will remember. His dad will remember. A shared secret that will haunt the three, and then two, and then only one of them, until the end._

The name never comes to him, but he can see the tombstone. He can feel the grief in his bones. There were scrawny arms around him. 

_“I miss her, too. It’s gonna be okay, Buck.”_

It’s the same foggy face he dreamt of. The one he thought of in the diner, just younger. Smaller. Always there. Sleeping next to Jack on the couch cushions on his parents’ floor. He didn’t stay over often, but when he did, Jack couldn’t help the ridiculous excitement. Didn’t matter how old they were. Seven, nine, thirteen. Didn’t matter what was going on, either.

Back then, everything was always okay as long as—

As long as Steve showed up.

-

He knows two Steves now, but they can’t be the same person.

It’s a common enough name, isn’t it?

Besides, the Steve in Jack’s memories is short and scrawny. He had knobby knees and hands that were too big, a pair of eyes that seemed too old for him and a big beak of a nose that had been broken too many times.

Sometimes, he was buzzing with anger. Sometimes, he was looking at Jack like he hung the goddamn moon. Most times, he was sick as a dog.

Even with that, these memories are better. These memories are like balm to a wound.

Sweltering summers on a fire escape looking over a city Jack can’t make out—maybe it is Brooklyn, after all. Bone-chilling winters that left the pipes freezing up, left them sleeping in layers or sharing Steve’s bed for body heat. 

Jack can remember lying awake cooped up beside Steve, didn’t even mind when sharp elbows dug into his ribs. It was winter, anyway, and if this meant Steve wasn’t catching his death—

_Almost died. So many times. Asthma and ulcers and flus and rheumatic fever and pneumonia, _ _he couldn’t breathe he wasn’t breathing lips turning blue fever burning him up from the inside out wasn’t even looking at you anymore kept asking where his ma was and how the hell were you supposed to tell him?_

Jack can feel that fear, so, so old, rising up his throat like vomit. 

He doesn’t believe in anything, and he doesn’t think he knows how to, but maybe he did once, because he knows he wondered why the hell anyone deserved to suffer that way. 

It’s written in green and red, but mostly red. All he seems to find is bad memories at one point. 

There isn’t much of this Steve. Maybe he did die the night he couldn’t breathe, but he seems to stubborn for that, so maybe he did make it through.

Jack has a feeling the world would have stopped spinning if he didn’t. 

-

He dreams about the Grand Canyon again, but he knows it’s not a memory. He can’t remember a place he’s never been to.

_The air is warm and he is not alone. Someone stands beside him, their arm rubbing up against his. No words between them. He can see a head of blond hair that looks coppery in this light. The world looks different, strange and familiar, and Jack’s bones don’t feel so weary._

_He isn’t sure which Steve this is. He’s taller and broader, a healthy flush in his skin, but with Jack’s Steve’s eyes and smile. _

_“Took you long enough to show up,” Steve—Not Steve, says. And scrubs a hand through his own hair. “I have any greys?”_

_Jack elbows him hard, and he laughs. They both do. “Watch it, punk,” he says, but he slings an arm across Not Steve’s shoulders, pulls him closer, and feels the tension twisting him up from the inside out begin fade. _

It might be the first peaceful dream Jack’s ever had, and it all ends as abruptly as it began. 

Jack’s eyes open at six-thirty on the dot. The flyer for the shuttle, neon yellow and half crumbled on the nightstand, calls out to him.

-

In the parking lot, Jack waits for almost thirty minutes, with two ridiculously energetic families, an old couple, and a couple of drifters. Somehow, he doesn’t stick out. 

The shuttle is a decent size, but it’s still too cramped when he sits inside. Too loud. The road is too bumpy. He watches it zip past, tunes out the chatter and the radio despite the itch building beneath his skin. 

An hour manages to slip past him, and by the time he gets the urge to tuck and roll out, the shuttle stops, and everyone gets off.

Jack almost stays in his seat before he remembers he wanted to come at all. His brain is burning itself out in its attempts to heal.

The air is blazing and thick on his skin, baking him through his clothes. The sky is a bright, cornflower blue. He almost takes his jacket off, but decides against it. He’s blending in fine enough, no point in screwing it up with anyone seeing his arm.

Besides, when he looks out at the view, the world goes on pause.

Jack stays for most of the day. Walks as long as he can, until the temperatures begin to dip into something bearable and sweat begins to dry on his skin. His shirt doesn’t stick to his back anymore. 

Three shuttles come and go, but he doesn’t want to leave. He’ll hitch back if he absolutely has to. 

He leans against a railing and watches the sun set. The moon rises in the ever darkening sky and the stars follow suit. 

The air tastes sweet and clean, and even though, he’s been seeing them almost constantly, it’s hard to stop looking at the stars. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen this many before.

He shrugs his jacket off, rests it over his arm, and lets the air hit him, cool and leave goose pimples rising on his skin.

That’s when he realizes he’s not alone, and his gut immediately goes cold. 

Someone is watching him. He can feel it. Eyes burning into his skull. 

Jack turns around, but finds no one. He tries to think of it as paranoia, even though the clench in his chest tells him otherwise.

Reluctantly, he turns back to the canyon, now a cavern of darkness, creeping up toward him. The gaping jaws of an animal.

_Are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?_

He’s imagining the sound of footsteps. He shuts his eyes, rubs the back of his neck, but _fuck_, the thought plants itself in his brain and won’t go away. _You have been seen_. 

It isn’t over. It isn’t over. It’s never, _ever_ over.

Another shuttle pulls up. To Jack’s relief, he’s the only one who boards.

His heart rattles against his chest the entire time. He runs a hand through sweat soaked hair.

_You have been seen._

-

Jack doesn’t sleep. He couldn’t if he wanted to. 

He packs his bag, just in case he needs to run. He keeps his gun in his waistband, and his eyes on the door. He looks out the window every five minutes, then forces himself to stop. He waits a while, and does it again. The sun rises and then he can’t bear to be alone. He can’t be cornered if someone is on his tail again.

If it’s HYDRA, he needs time to plan a way out. He needs time to react. He can’t be caught off-guard again.

Jack walks into the diner at 10:30. He only ever comes at night. It’s a break in his routine and he hates it.

It’s too busy. Bright and sunny and loud. Someone is sitting in his usual spot. They’re low on coffee, but brewing more. A different waitress takes his order. He doesn’t catch her name.

_You need to go. You need to leave_. He stares out the window. Nothing suspicious in the lot, just two pick-ups—orange and teal, and a beat up grey coupe. He draws his attention to the box of sugar and packets of jelly beside him. He finds one of his pens in his jacket, and writes on the back of the paper placemat in front of him. 

Time slips by. Just like the shuttle. Only this time, he isn’t sure how much. _Head’s fucked up, remember? Don’t get loopy. Don’t get lost in it._

His food is set in front of him. It couldn’t have been too long, then, but still, it doesn’t feel right. 

He wants to leave, but if he goes back to the motel and straight into an ambush, he knows he won’t fare well. He should leave the state while he can, put as much distance between Flagstaff and himself as possible. He’ll cut his hair, use a new name. He can work, find a corner of the world for himself until he’s finally assumed dead.

If he can do that, he might be okay. 

Jack contemplates it all over his breakfast, over coffee that tastes acrid and watery. He has a plan at the tip of his tongue, mapped out in his head, and then the bell on the front door rings. 

It takes everything in him not to look at whoever it is. He can hear a greeting, a declination, and—

Footsteps. Jack doesn’t move when someone slides into the seat opposite him, when a pair of boots knock into his own. 

Jack knows who it is before he even looks up. 

His face has healed completely, but he looks tired. Half dead on his feet, and the warm light streaming through the windows only makes it more obvious. 

The circles beneath his eyes are deep. His blond hair is hidden beneath a cap and he has the beginnings of a beard, but it does nothing to disguise him. Not to Jack, at least. Other people can look straight through him, as if his face isn’t plastered everywhere all the time.

He doesn’t have any weapons on him. None that Jack can see, but a man like Steve Rogers doesn’t need weapons.

The same way Jack doesn’t need them. 

For a while, Steve doesn’t say anything. He looks shocked that Jack is here at all, or maybe because Jack hasn’t booked it out the door yet. 

“You know,” he finally says, voice stiff and low. “You’re pretty hard to track down.” 

Jack stabs at his pancakes and puts the forkful in his mouth. He can’t look away. Can’t move the way he wants to. His limbs feel weak and rubbery. “Yeah, that was kind of the point,” he snaps through a mouthful. “But here you are.”

“Here I am,” Steve says. His lips twitches downward, like he has a bad taste in his mouth.

“You were watching me last night,” Jack says. It’s not a question. He already knows, and Steve’s expression is enough of a confirmation. “At the Grand Canyon.”

Steve looks almost guilty. “I thought you noticed,” he says. “You remember me?”

Why wouldn’t he? 

“Sure. I know you,” Jack says flatly. Something like hope brightens in Steve’s eyes, but it extinguishes completely when Jack says, “Everyone does. I saw your Smithsonian exhibit.”

“That’s a lie and we both know it,” Steve says urgently, leaning on his elbows across the table.

“Look, I don’t know what you want me to say,” Jack says, and if anything, _that’s_ a lie. 

“You remember me,” Steve continues. He takes his cap off, like it might help. The sun catches his hair. _He needs to cut it_, Jack thinks suddenly. “I know you do. I know you remember what happened on the—“

“The helicarrier,” Jack says, and it tastes bitter on his lips. His throat feels thick, like the dirt of the Canyon lodged somewhere in there. In his chest. “I know.” 

“You saved my life.”

“I shot you.” 

“But then you saved me,” Steve says. “Pulled me out of the Potomac. Why?”

“Why does it matter?” Jack asks, and then, because he has to know. “Why are you here?” 

Steve’s eyes flicker somewhere behind Jack. Jack almost follows his gaze. “Because I need some answers,” he says, and that heaviness behind his eyes returns. His mouth works. “And, I need you to—“

Thank fucking Christ, that’s when Maggie, of all people, decides to show up. 

“Hey, you’re here early,” she says, rests her hands on the tabletop. She smiles at Jack. He feels a little stupid for being relieved she’s on a morning shift now. “How’s it going, Over Easy?” 

Steve stares Jack dead in the eyes as if to say _really?_

Jack turns his gaze back to Maggie. “Still kicking, aren’t I?”

“Far as I can tell,” Maggie quips, then nods her head at Steve. “And you brought a friend for once.” 

“Sure did,” Steve says, just as Jack says, “Not really.” 

“You from Brooklyn, too?” Maggie asks. 

“Born and bred,” Steve says, too easily, even with the tense set of his shoulders. He’s not using the voice he uses with others, the voice he uses on TV. “Grew up in Vinegar Hill. Both of us.” 

“Well, I’d imagine you’re pretty good company if Jack’s your buddy,” Maggie says, and then just low enough for the three of them, “He’s a real life saver. Kept this creep off my tail and walked me to my car. Beat the shit out of the guy when he wouldn’t buzz off.”

“I didn’t beat the shit out of him,” Jack says. “I broke his nose. And his wrist.” 

That’s funny, apparently, to both Steve and Maggie. “I swear, he threw him like a rag doll. It was something to see,” Maggie says. 

“That’s Jack for you,” Steve says, and looks right at Jack. “Got me out of plenty of scuffs when we were kids. Still does sometimes. All of ‘em were my fault, though.”

_Oh, cut the horse shit_, Jack almost says, but he bites his tongue. 

“Come on,” Maggie says. “You seem like an okay guy.” 

“You’d be surprised,” Jack says before he can stop himself. He feels weird. Christ, his _voice_ doesn’t even feel right in his throat. “Never seen anyone so eager to get his ass handed to him in my life.” 

“Good thing he had you around, I bet,” Maggie says. “You’re a pretty good bodyguard.” 

“Bodyguard, huh?” Steve says. 

Their conversation hasn’t ended. They’re speaking in a code only they understand and Jack doesn’t get how. 

“That’s me,” Jack says. “Savior of brats everywhere. Steve, Becca, Dottie, and now you.”

“Well, don’t I feel special,” Maggie says, and then she turns to Steve. “Can I get you something?”

“No,” Jack says, too aggressively, before Steve has a chance to speak. “We’re probably gonna clear out, catch up. Haven’t seen each other in a long while.” 

It takes a second, but Maggie disappears behind the counter, and then Steve turns back to him. 

“So,” he says. “Jack. You walk girls back to their cars, punch a face or two in when you have to. You seem like a stand up guy.”

“Fuck you,” Jack says without humor, and the friendly facade they were holding begins to fray. “You don’t know anything about me.”

Steve seems to be both building up walls and breaking them down just as fast. “Listen, I didn’t come here for a fight,” he says. “I came because—“

“Yeah, that’s a good question,” Jack says. “Why are you actually here? To bring me in?”

“What?” Steve is incredulous. “No. _No_, of course not.”

“Like hell.” 

“I’m here on my own,” Steve says. “I’m here to help you. I’m here to talk.” 

Jack feels cornered, and he knows it’s intentional. He can’t react the way he wants to. Can’t make any attempts to scare Steve off. There are too many witnesses. 

If there were none, Jack would have been able to incapacitate Steve in less than ten seconds. He could have pulled his gun and told him to leave. 

His heart is jackhammering in his chest, but he isn’t sure why. 

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Jack says. He slams a twenty onto the table and walks out before Steve has time to respond.

\- 

The last thing he needs is for Steve to catch up with him.

Jack makes it back to the motel in two minutes flat and shuts himself in his room. He draws the curtains. He sits in the chair by the desk and he waits, fingers curled around the grip of his 9mm.

Nothing happens.

He takes his gun apart and puts it back together. He checks the room for bugs, though he knows he won’t find any. He sits and waits for trouble, but none comes. The air conditioning leaves the room feeling cold and wet.

Thirty minutes pass by, and then someone knocks at the door. His guts twist into knots. 

Jack’s steps are feather light when he slips to the window, peeks through a crack in the curtains.

Steve is standing at the door, with the sun soaking his skin in gold.

He’s weaponless, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Shoulders tense. He knocks again—o_netwothreefour_—before he turns around, rests his elbows against the balcony.

He’s not going to wait. 

No way in _hell_ is he going to wait.

\- 

Steve is waiting. 

Jack leaves the window after a while. He returns, and sure enough, Steve is still there. Restless, baking in the steadily rising heat, but still waiting for Jack to let him in.

_Goddamn it._

Jack opens the door halfway. Steve whips around, eyes sweeping over Jack like he isn’t sure he’s real. He’s sweating, skin flushed.

“I said we’ve got nothing to talk about,” Jack says. “Go away.”

He moves to slam the door, but Steve blocks it with his foot, stepping closer, halfway into the room. Jack raises his gun, presses the barrel to Steve’s sternum.

Steve’s heart pumps against it, it radiates into Jack’s palm. It’s a strange feeling. Leaves his blood running cold. 

“Go,” Jack snarls. “_Away_." 

Steve puts his hands up. “I’m here as a friend,” he says. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” 

“Bullshit,” Jack says. His ears are ringing. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his skull. “We’re not friends. Who sent you?” 

“No one sent me,” Steve says, like he’s trying to talk down a wild animal. “I came on my own.”

“You tracked me down,” Jack corrects. “You don’t know how to do that. I know you don’t. Who found me?”

“I’ve never lied to you before, and I don’t want to start now,” Steve says. “You were right. Natasha Romanov told me—“ 

“A fucking SHIELD agent told you!” Jack’s vision flashes white. He cocks the gun. Steve’s mask falters.

“She did it because I asked her to,” Steve says quickly. His chest is heaving, just slightly. “_She’s_ helping _me_. No one else knows where you are, I promise. Just put the gun down, and I’ll explain everything.”

“No.” Jack shakes his head. “No. You’re gonna turn around, and walk away. You’re not coming back. The minute you do, I’ll make sure you don’t come out the other side.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Steve repeats, softer this time. Jack’s fingers feel numb around his gun. His legs are weakening, and he backs away when Steve comes closer. The door shuts, and god, _fear_—thick like vomit—rises in Jack’s throat. “You’re safe with me.”

“I’m not safe anywhere,” Jack blurts out. “HYDRA’s a cancer. They’re spread all over the place, and they’re looking for you _too_, asshole. I’m not safe with you. You’re a fucking beacon for trouble. They catch you here, I end up right back where I started.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Steve argues. “Buck, that’s exactly why you need to listen to me.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jack grits out. “_Don’t_.”

“Okay,” Steve says quickly. “It’s Jack, right? Jack what? That a nickname or...?”

He takes another step closer. Jack does the same. “No,” he says, and his own answer leaves him hollow. There’s nothing else. No other name. “It’s just Jack.” 

A nod. “Okay,” Steve repeats. “Jack, I know I sound like a broken record, but I’m on your side. I’ve been on your side this entire time, and whether you believe me or not, you gotta let me help you. I don’t know how much time we have, and now’s not the time to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

That can’t—

_No_. 

Jack can barely hear himself, not with the blood pounding in his ears, when he asks, “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” 

Stomping. Gunshots. Semi-automatic. The window shatters, and then, inhumanly fast, Steve’s body collides into his and knocks him to the ground so hard his vision flashes.

-

They’re jammed in the space between the bed and the wall, crouched as low as they can get.

“You did this,” Jack growls. Steve’s face is inches from his, knees bracketing Jack’s hips. “You led them here.”

“No.” Steve’s breath is hot and urgent. “No, I _found_ them here. I told you I came here on my own, but I’ve been keeping them off of you since last night, leading ‘em in the wrong directions. Making sure you weren’t being followed.” 

Jack’s ears ring._ You let your guard down. You did it again. _The Arizona heat soaking into his skin soaked into his _head_ and left him sloppy. 

He wasn’t made to be sloppy.

Another round of shots. They’re hidden but Steve still throws an arm around Jack’s head, shoving him further down, bringing their body even closer together, if that’s possible.

“We gotta get out of here,” Steve says in Jack’s ear. “We’re outnumbered. We’re outgunned. There’s six of them, and two of us.”

Footsteps. Rushing closer. “Not for long,” Jack says, and tightens his grip on his gun.

The door is kicked open. Jack shoves Steve off and leaps up, rolling across the bed. Two shots. Thigh. Between the eyes. The agent—dressed in tac gear up to his _eyes_, surely to avoid Jack easily picking any more goons off—falls in a heap. 

More are on their way.

Jack swipes his backpack onto his shoulder, and keeps his gun aimed at the door. “Where’s your shield?” 

Nothing, and then, “...in the trunk.”

“Are you fucking _kidding me_?” Jack shouts. Another agent steps in. Jack disarms him and snaps his neck. The body falls with a thud. “Captain America doesn’t have his goddamn shield?” 

Steve is up and by his side instead of answering. He’s scoping the room out, keeping his ears open, but his gaze still lingers around Jack.

“Get his gun,” Jack barks. “Make yourself useful.”

Steve is not wearing the suit, thank god. As if Jack needs a target like that on his back.

“Two more, on their way up.” Jack is already rushing out when he says it. The last thing he’s doing now is running. If HYDRA wants him, they’ll have to raise hell to get him. He’ll pick them off until the entire US branch is destroyed. “Look alive!”

Jack doesn’t look at their faces now. He only finds their weak spots. Fist to the throat before he tosses the first over the balcony. 

The second slips away from him, but their body is thrown back into his field of vision, head hitting the concrete with a _crunch_.

Steve steps up beside him. “That’s four down,” he says. He has blood on his lips. “Where are the other—“

A stun gun crackles so loudly Jack can feel it in his stomach. 

He braces himself for the blow, but a flash of black and a ruddy face appears behind Steve with the weapon, twisting a hand in his hair before the prongs connect beneath his jaw. 

A boot collides into Jack’s spine, and it knocks the wind from him. Sends him prostrate on the ground, jeans ripping at his knees. 

He moves before the agent can grab him, launching himself up despite his lungs spasming. Elbow to the agent’s throat. Butt of the gun to the nose, the jaw. A bullet to the head.

He doesn’t realize how fast it is until he turns to find Steve still in a headlock with the other agent. Steve elbows the guy, even with the currents of electricity rushing through him, but it doesn’t do any good. 

The same treatment for this goon. Jack’s bullet strikes him in the eye socket. He staggers, and takes Steve down with him. The stun gun clatters to the ground. 

All six down. _Targets neutralized._

“For fuck’s sake,” Jack hisses. He disarms the agents, taking their guns and their magazines, the stun gun—a goddamn _Runt—, _a switchblade from a sleeve. He shoves them all into his backpack. 

And then he turns to Steve. Alive, but reeling. Awake, but not aware. The agent’s blood is soaking into his t-shirt.

Jack pulls him up by the shirtfront, and it’s almost effortless. When Steve falls against him, full weight against Jack’s side, he’s already regaining some of his footing, but not much.

That’s an all too familiar feeling. Jack tries not to think about it, the leaden feeling of his limbs, the scatter of thoughts he can’t piece together.

“Which one’s your car?” Jack asks, and hauls Steve’s arm around his shoulders. Jack’s good hand grips Steve’s side when he doesn’t respond. “Come on, buddy, throw me a line here.”

Jack is halfway down the stairs, watching Steve’s feet drag beside his own when he finally hears, “Grey coupe, end of the lot.” It’s slow and breathless. Steve’s fingers are twitching against Jack’s sweatshirt. 

Sure enough, it’s there. A slate grey four door. A piece of junk, probably made early 2000s. Jack spotted it at the diner, too. It was at the Grand Canyon, and he didn’t even notice.

Sloppy. 

The agents are dead, back up will be on its way soon if there is no word. In Pittsburgh, Jack’s only advantage was that HYDRA assumed he was already contained.

Steve is right. Now isn’t the time to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He fishes the keys from Steve’s pocket with a bit of effort and unlocks the car, dumping him in the passenger seat before he gets in the driver’s.

As much as Jack wants to peel out, he doesn’t. He backs out slowly. All but holds his breath as they make their way out, aware of every single face, every single car.

-

Jack drives with the window open, breathing in lungfuls of cold air.

If he were able to get across the border, he’d be in the clear for an undetermined amount of time. He’d be able to blend in better than before, or find a corner of the world no one would think to look for him. 

But with no papers to speak of, and the goddamn _cargo_ he now has in the passenger seat, he can’t see that as a possibility. 

So, he keeps driving. An hour slips by like nothing. Miles and miles of blue sky, the red sand of the desert, and an empty stretch of road are all he sees. 

Maybe, in other circumstances, it could be beautiful. 

Maybe, it could be peaceful.

A groan, low and quiet, catches his attention. With a glance, Jack sees Steve maneuvering himself out of his uncomfortable position. He squeezes his eyes against the sun, and when he rolls his neck, he curses. 

Jack can see the angry marks the stun gun left beneath his chin, already fading to a dull red.

“Bucky.” Steve’s voice is low and laced with discomfort. Jack’s hands tighten on the wheel, sets his eyes back on the road. “What the hell happened?”

“The agents are dead,” Jack answers. “And now we’re here.”

Steve sighs. He’s still in pain, but the sound is exasperated, more than anything. “God, I’m...that’s why I came. Tried to get them off your—“

“I know. You told me,” Jack says. “But why?”

“Now, see, I know I told you that,” Steve says. He sounds better already. Stronger. “I came because I want to help you, but you ended up saving my ass instead.”

_Don’t I always?_ Jack almost says, but he bites his tongue. “I didn’t have much of a choice. You got hit with a few hundred million volts, pal,” he says instead. “Anyone’s head’ll turn to scrambled eggs. Even yours.” 

_Even mine. _

“Learn something new everyday, I guess,” Steve says.

“Just be grateful you didn’t piss yourself,” Jack says. “Hell, _I_ should be grateful. Cleaned up enough messes today.” 

For a moment, Steve says nothing, but then he chuckles, low and quiet, still laced with pain. 

“Something funny?” Jack asks. “Sharing is caring, y’know.”

Steve sobers up a little then. Shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. “It’s...it’s nothing. Like you said, scrambled eggs.”

Bullshit. Whatever Steve actually wants to say is hanging in the air, weighing down on Jack’s shoulders. 

Jack grinds his teeth together. “The minute you get your shit together,” he says. “I’m gone. Go wherever you want to go, do what you gotta do, but leave me out of it.”

Steve’s jaw works. “Jack, I can’t just—“ 

“Yeah, well, I’m not giving you a choice.” Jack snaps. “I could have left you there, you know.” 

“So, why didn’t you?” Steve asks. 

It’s not snide. It’s not an invitation for conflict. It’s a question. _Why didn’t you?_

Jack drums his flesh fingers on the steering wheel. Focuses on the wind whistling in his ears. “Because you would have just found me again,” he says without looking at Steve. “You wouldn’t know what ‘fuck off’ meant if it knocked you in your face.”

Somehow, Jack knows he’s hit the nail on the head. It rings true down to his bones. Digs its way into him like the memory of bloody, swollen noses and split knuckles and black eyes and _Jesus, Rogers, next time know when to give up, I can’t chase you through every shit-stinking alley in Brooklyn_—

“That’s not true,” Steve says, and it’s firmer than before. He’s using his...his goddamn Captain America voice, and it makes Jack want to knock him a good one himself. “It’s just not true.” 

Jack laughs bitterly, shakes his head. “Sure, it isn’t.”

“You could have let me drown in the Potomac, too,” Steve says, segueing back. “But you didn’t. You saved my life. That means something.” 

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Jack says. “Let it go.”

“It _means_ you still got some of you left,” Steve says. “Means they didn’t take everything.”

“Just let it _go_, all right?” Jack grits out, and it’s too close to begging. “Please, just let it go.”

The air is too thin now, leaves his lungs feeling too full and his head too light.

Silence presses heavy on his ears. He’s all too aware of the blood smeared on his hands. The racing of his heart. The presence of Steve beside him.

He realizes as the city limits slip past him that he’s grinding his teeth. That he’s—

“Woah, slow down.” Steve’s voice is both a blessing and a curse. “We’re in the clear.”

The car is pushing past ninety miles per hour. Jack only dials it back to eighty. “Can’t take any risks,” he says. 

“They’re all dead,” Steve says.

“You don’t _know_ that.” Jack’s heart is pounding too hard. “You don’t—there’s always more of them.”

“You want to pull over?” Steve asks. 

Jack wonders what he must look like to bring on a question like that. He shakes his head quickly. “No.”

“I feel fine if you want me to drive.”

“_No_,” Jack repeats, swallows thickly. “No, I just—let me get us the fuck out of here.” 

He isn’t sure when this turned into ‘us’. He tries not to look at Steve when he shifts his position, sits a little straighter. 

Jack clears his throat. “Look,” he continues. “You want to talk? Fine. Talk. About...I dunno, what do people talk about?”

Of course, Jack has talked to people, but it’s only been out of necessity. He’s never willingly talked to anyone outside of a store or the diner, someone he needed a ride from or someone at the front desk of a hotel.

He spoke to his handlers, but responding to questions or recapping a mission doesn’t count. Before all of this, he only spoke unless someone spoke to him.

“Uh.” Steve jolts Jack from the fog in his head. “People talk about...people talk about how their day went, or their week. They talk about their..." 

He laughs humorlessly. It sets Jack’s teeth on edge.

“What?” Jack asks.

“It’s just,” Steve says. “I guess I’m not too good at small talk, either.”

“Well, look at us,” Jack says drily. “Two peas in a pod.”

That must be the wrong thing to say, because Steve doesn’t talk for a long while after that.

-

There is no sound, no talking between them, just the radio, flickering in and out. The rush of a few cars, a couple of trucks on the highway. 

Aside from that, it feels like Jack and Steve are the only two people on earth. He isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or not. 

The radio is too loud, but it’s the only station that seems to work. First, it played something about white winged doves and then a hotel you can’t check out of, and now it plays something about trading heroes for ghosts, lost souls swimming in fish bowls.

“Can you find something that isn’t music?” Jack asks halfway through it. “Jesus.”

Steve glances at him. “I thought you left it on because you liked it,” he says.

“No way,” Jack says. “I can’t take this shit. Too much noise.”

“Oh, thank god,” Steve says with feeling, and flips it to AM radio. It’s a Spanish news station, but it’s better than the other stations. Jack can understand a few snatches of it. After a long stretch, Steve speaks again. “You’d think it would be the other way around, getting better instead of worse.” 

Some of the stiffness in Jack’s shoulders has gone away. He almost wants it back. He doesn’t want to be civil with Steve, but he does.

“Seems like everything’s like that,” Jack says without thinking. It just seems like the right thing to say. “Food’s better, though.”

Steve’s laugh is closer to a huff. A relieved sound. “Coffee’s better, too.”

He doesn’t smile with his mouth this time, rather with his eyes, and Jack tries his damnedest not to think of charcoal stained fingers or stubborn, floppy blond hair. 

There’s a question on Jack’s lips, but he knows it will open up Pandora’s goddamn box, so he doesn’t say a word. Luckily, Steve speaks before Jack can wonder about it too much.

“Think you’re the first person to agree with me on this stuff,” Steve says.

“I’ll bet,” Jack says. He knows it’s true, and he isn’t sure why. An answer approaches him, but it slips away before he can catch it.

He lets it go and keeps driving. 

\- 

By nightfall, they’re in Hobbs, New Mexico. 

They find a Motel 6. Jack waits in the car while Steve checks in, and then completely regrets it.

“It’s just precaution,” Steve says when Jack drops his bag on the bed closest to the wall. “Better we’re in the same place in case—“

“Yeah,” Jack cuts in hollowly. “Got it.”

There are two beds, considerably far apart from each other, but Jack is hesitant to share a room with Steve. He can’t imagine sleeping with someone else so close by. He can’t not have the upper hand.

“You drove for almost ten hours straight,” Steve says, and Jack’s stomach clenches tightly. “You should get some sleep.”

“I’m fine.” Jack knows it’s at least half true. He was made to be efficient. Made to stay awake for as long as they needed him to, pumped him full of drugs to leave him wired, fingers twitching, senses high and alert.

He doesn’t have that advantage anymore, but his brain is still trained to it for the most part. 

“I believe that,” Steve says, again, like Jack is some kind of wild thing. “But you need to rest.”

Jack takes a step back. “You’re not my handler.”

That sucks all the air out of the room. Jack’s stomach drops heavily, and Steve looks at him with so much goddamn _pity_, Jack wants to punch it off of him.

“I’m not here to make you do anything you don’t want to do. That’s not—look, if it makes you feel any better,” Steve says, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. He’s uncomfortable. It shows all over his face, it gives Jack some peace of mind. _“_We can sleep in shifts.”

“No deal,” Jack says sharply. “_I’ll_ let you know if trouble comes knocking. I don’t sleep much as it is.” 

Steve’s eyes drift downward, and then back up to Jack’s before he nods, crosses his arms. “Sure,” he says, resigned. “No problem. If that’s what you want.”

_It doesn’t matter what I want_, Jack wants to say, but he’s tired, so tired of talking. 

His voice rattles out of his throat anyway. 

“No one’s making you keep me around, you know,” Jack says. “You could have dumped me at any exit and got on your way.” 

“Why would I do that?” 

“Why wouldn’t you?”

A muscle pulses deep in Steve’s jaw, his brows knitting together. _Good_. A part of Jack wants to see him snap. “Jack, if I came all the way here just to—“ 

“Just to what?” Jack says. His voice is rising, just enough to leave Steve looking a little more pissed off, a little more guarded than before. “What did you expect? What do you think’s gonna happen now, we’re gonna be back to back picking off HYDRA’s goons till we run out of road?”

Jack is sweating. He can feel it on his neck, on his forehead, but he doesn’t think it’s the heat. His good hand clenches into a fist, nails digging into the meat of his palm.

“Because that’s not the case,” Jack continues through clenched teeth, taking a step forward. “I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I’m doing what’s necessary for _me_. I see someone suspicious, I hear a whisper, I get a goddamn _feeling_, I book it. However I can. Even if that’s with you.”

“If you really didn’t want to be here, you would have left by now,” Steve argues. “And I would have let you.”

“You’re lying,” Jack says, voice catching on it. He shakes his head. But that’s—that’s not true. That can’t be true. A headache is pulsing behind his left eye. _Get it together, don’t do this. Not here. Not with him. _“Fucking lying to me just like—“ 

He’s against the wall. He doesn’t remember backing away. 

Steve is coming closer. The helicarrier is burning. Snow whips around them. A catwalk is groaning and creaking beneath their feet, but _no, no, it isn’t._ The room is silent and cool. Steve’s footsteps are muffled by the carpet. 

Jack reaches for his gun, but it’s in his bag. His reflexes aren’t quick enough to grab his knife now. Steve will—he’ll—

“Steve,” Jack says a little desperately, like it’s the only word that makes any sense in his head. Bone deep and curling right on his tongue. His body is shaking. _Faulty. Unstable. The only part of you that makes sense is the parts that were created for you. _HYDRA couldn’t afford faults. Couldn’t afford weak spots. When he didn’t do what they wanted, they spoke of killing him. Beat him like a—

“_They beat me like a dog, Steve. Pumped me full of god knows what.”_

“I’m right here,” Steve says quickly. He’s too close. He’s touching Jack, hands on his biceps, feather light._ He can’t do that. He’s not supposed— _“Not going anywhere.”

Nothing makes any sense. It’s like falling into one of his dreams. Losing himself in the frantic scrawl of his notebook. Too much red and not enough green. 

“I can’t,” Jack rasps, and twists his fingers in Steve’s shirt. Jack is torn between pushing him away and pulling him closer. His body doesn’t feel like his own. “I don’t know how to—“ 

“It’s okay,” Steve says. He breathes raggedly, Jack can feel it fan over his face. _It’s not okay. _“It’s gonna be okay, Buck.” _Wrong name. Wrong name. Wrong name. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is. _

“It’s not,” Jack mumbles. He watches the rapid rise and fall of Steve’s chest. He can feel his heart pounding against his hand, matching his own. Just as fast. Just as hard. He forces himself to meet Steve’s eyes. “It’s _not_. It’s _never_ going to stop.” 

“It could,” Steve says. “Let me help you.”

_Don’t trust him. Can’t. Can’t let him close, but look at you now. Nose to nose with him. _

“Tell me why,” Jack says.

Steve doesn’t answer. He’s not being cagey. Jack can see the words trying to come out, see Steve trying to find a way to explain it. 

“Don’t lie. Please, just tell me,” Jack begs. “Because I...”

His own words are lost. Tongue twisted. It’s been happening too much lately. _Remember. Remember_. What was he saying? _Because? Because **what**? _Because—

“Потому что я не понимаю,” Jack murmurs. “Я не...”

He allows his good hand to slide up, fit against Steve’s cheek, thumb sliding over the jut of bone, the line of his nose. And then finally, the swell of his lower lip. 

Whatever barriers Steve had been holding up are now crashing down. It shows in his eyes first, and then cracks down his face. A dam open and flooding.

“You know me,” Steve says urgently. His fingers curl around Jack’s hand, and the touch is steadying. Gentle. Familiar. Jack’s chest swells with it. “Not from DC, there’s more than that. You know there is.”

Jack does know that, but he can’t just _say it. _Even with the freedom he has, he can’t bring himself to respond. The last few weeks have been grasping at straws, trying to understand memories that might not even be real.

The words he wants to say are stuck somewhere in his throat, just like Steve’s. Choking him. 

Steve must see it because his other hand grips the back of Jack’s neck, pulling him close. Everything in Jack’s body is screaming at him to back away. To run. To break Steve’s face open all over again and leave him for dead for good this time. 

“You want to know why I really came? I came because I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Steve says. “I’ve been hearing whispers, going off leads, but it’s not enough. I stood away, but I had to see you for myself.”

_See your face. Hear your voice._

“Back there, in the diner?” Steve says, and Jack isn’t sure if he’s going to laugh or cry. “I know you’re still figuring things out, but that was you. I saw _you_ back there.”

Jack shakes his head. “It was a _front_.” 

“And I’ve known that front my whole life,” Steve argues. “Everything I said back there was true. I just didn’t know how else to make you listen.”

“I—“ Jack isn’t sure how to phrase it. “Even if that’s true, I don’t think we can be the people we were before.”

His hand hasn’t moved. Steve’s skin is warm beneath it. Jack can feel stubble against his palm.

“We don’t have to be,” Steve says. “That’s not what I want.”

For just a moment, everything is startlingly clear. Clear when Jack tugs Steve forward, when he tastes his mouth, full and warm and slack, against his own.

It’s not even a kiss. It’s searching for an answer. Trying to find whatever he’s looking for behind Steve’s lips. Trying to coax whatever Steve really wants to say out from his throat. 

There’s no response, there’s nothing but the slackness of Steve’s mouth, his body frozen in Jack’s grasp. He doesn’t push Jack off, doesn’t protest, but it feels wrong.

So, Jack shoves him backward, and the static in his head returns, louder and more unforgiving. The heat trapped in his body takes on a different meaning, heady and tight.

Steve is staring at him, eyes wide, like he’s both found the answer to a question he’s been asking endlessly, and lost it completely. 

Jack thinks he can understand that.

He snaps out of whatever state he’s fallen into when Jack slips away and grabs his backpack. 

“Wait.” Steve’s voice is strangled in his throat, and he finally seems to get a grip on his motor skills, but Jack is already grabbing the doorknob. 

“_Wait,” _Steve repeats, and grabs him by the crook of his elbow. Jack can feel the warmth of his hand through his jacket. “Jack, don’t.”

Jack’s head is spinning. “Don’t touch me,” he says.

“Just hear me out—“

“I’m not who you think I am,” Jack says without looking up. “Even if I was, he’s long gone. No point in chasing ghosts.”

Something in Steve’s expression crumbles. His grip loosens, but he doesn’t let Jack go. Not completely. “I’m not chasing a ghost,” Steve says.

Jack wrenches his arm free. “Yes, you are,” he says, and shuts the door behind him.

\- 

Jack still has the car keys in his pocket, so he puts them to good use, and he drives.

He drives nowhere in particular. It does nothing to stop his hands from shaking, his heart from thundering against his ribcage.

More than anything, he wants a distraction, but it turns out that there’s absolutely _nothing_ in Hobbs. Not from what Jack can see. 

In Flagstaff, he could mostly rely on his own two feet, and besides, it only took a walk across a road to get to the diner, a gas station, a thrift store, a goddamn _bodega_, _anything._

With all of its issues, the bad memories, the dreams, Steve showing up, he’s not ashamed to say he almost misses it. It’s only been less than a day, but Jack has never had a routine. Never had somewhere to lie his head or call home.

If he’d stayed in Arizona any longer, found a job, maybe he could have figured something out. Got his memories back in his own time.

And if he didn’t, he could have started fresh.

A sleepy town appears around him, but something about it rubs him the wrong way. He turns around and gets on the highway. He thinks about leaving, but when a hollow ache slips into his chest, he decides against it. 

He could. He really could. The car runs well enough and has a full tank of gas. He has a backpack filled with weapons and cash. It won’t be long before Steve realizes Jack isn’t coming back. 

But, there lies the problem.

The moment it clicks, Steve will be at Jack’s heels again. Whether it takes him a day or a week or a month, he’ll find a way back to him because that’s just who he is. Stubbornness runs in Steve’s veins thicker than blood.

It’s hard to deny that they’re connected, whether Jack likes it or not, but it couldn’t have been...it couldn’t have been like that. Steve never gave any indication of it.

He’s been kind, sure. Too pitying, but not wanting anything more than Jack taking his offer for help. 

Jack’s mistake was enough evidence of that.

It could be crossed wires. A fucked up memory, confusing Steve with someone else, but...no, that isn’t right, is it? 

Jack can, if he tries hard enough, remember a few girls, faces and names that escape him the moment he tries to focus on them. They didn’t even make it into his notes despite him being aware they existed, despite the fact that he used the thoughts of them to learn the rhythm of his body, what it was to feel want and how to take care of it. 

The heat of Steve’s mouth feels more right than those memories though, his breath on Jack’s face, it all seems so— 

A horn honks almost frantically. Green light. _Get it together._

_-_

Jack manages to kill a couple of hours. He sits in a nearly empty restaurant, picking at a plate of food and killing time until they tell him they’re closing up.

He gets back in the car and continues driving, just for a little while, and thinks about leaving for good, but it doesn’t feel right.

Going back to the motel doesn’t feel right either.

If Jack goes back, this becomes part of him. A bigger part of him than it already was. Going back is admitting to it. Admitting that, _yes_, he remembers something. Not whatever he’s meant to remember, but _something_.

If remembering Steve is what drove Jack to escape, why can’t he let him in? Why can’t he let the memories in?

Will it bring back a life he lived and can’t recall, or break him even further, shatter the pieces that have remained, that morphed him into the closest thing he’s ever felt to human?

The sky is a deep mauve, dull and heavy with clouds for once. 

Jack grits out a curse, and turns onto the exit. The massive red ‘6’ guides him forward. 

\- 

It’s midnight by the time Jack steps up to the door. 

He knocks three times and almost speaks, but his words die on his tongue. The curtain jostles a little, but then there’s nothing. The wind rushes by, colder than before.

Before he can allow himself to dwell on his worries, the door opens, and Steve comes fully into view. He looks tired. 

No, he looks worn. As worn as Jack feels. The darkness under his eyes looks deeper. Stress coiled in his body even tighter than before.

Steve’s mouth works once, fingers drumming once along the door. “I didn’t think you were coming back,” he says.

Jack swallows, resists the urge to clench his fists at his sides. “Me neither,” he admits.

Steve lets him in without another word.

The room is still and too quiet. Steve’s bed is still made up, nothing about it out of place. The chair is pulled out from the desk. The hotel pad and pen are scattered there. 

Steve shuts the door with a soft click, leans against it for a fraction of a second too long. 

His expression is as raw and open as it was before. It makes Jack’s chest twist, words turning to ash on his tongue. 

It’s hard to look at him, so Jack tries not to. He crosses the room, sets his bag on his bed. When he sits down, the springs creak.

“Look,” Steve starts. He’s tense, mouth tight, arms crossed even tighter. “What happened earlier—“

“Just forget it,” Jack says, too quickly. “Water under the bridge. I’m sorry.”

He restrains himself from repeating it, biting on his inner cheek. Apologies taste rotten in his mouth. He’s only ever apologized in hopes of mercy in return. 

_Steve might be merciful_, a part of Jack thinks. Steve won’t hate him for this. Jack doesn’t think Steve hates him for anything, and he knows he doesn’t hate Steve, he just— 

He just doesn’t understand him. 

Steve doesn’t say anything. He only shakes his head. He only watches Jack with eyes that are too kind. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. “But, we’ll forget about it. If that’s what you want.” 

“Why do you care so much about what I want?” Jack asks. He can’t help it.

Steve’s brows knit together. “What kind of question is that?”

Jack laughs humorlessly, scrubs a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to let me walk all over you just because things are rough on my end. You’re allowed to be pissed off, you know,” he says quietly. “You don’t have to be so...”

He isn’t sure what the right word is.

“So, what?” Steve presses.

“You just don’t have to do this,” Jack says instead of coming up with whatever lingered at the tip of his tongue. “Don’t gotta put up with me.”

Steve steps closer, and he sits on the other bed, leaning forward to catch Jack’s eye. “This isn’t putting up with you. I’m not doing this because I have to,” he says. “I’m doing it because I want to. I wouldn’t drive two thousand miles for someone I didn’t care about.”

He didn’t mean to say that. It shows in his face, because, for once, he shuts up quickly. 

But, it makes things click. If only a little.

Jack wants to look away, wants to bolt all over again, but he holds Steve’s eyes. He doesn’t think he could look away if he tried. 

“HYDRA wasn’t on me the whole time, there wasn’t any trouble straight off the bat,” Jack says slowly. “So, you drove all the way across the country, all the way to Flagstaff just to, what? Talk?”

Steve shrugs, but it’s stiff. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe to help show you you’re not what they made you to be.”

“I _am_—“ Jack leans forward. “What they made me to be. Nothing else.''

“How do you know that?” Steve says, but he doesn’t raise his voice. Jack almost wishes he’d get angry, because this is worse. This is so much worse. “You’re...you’re a _person_, Jack. You’re not a weapon. I know that, I know _you_ know that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Otherwise, I wouldn’t—“

“Don’t, all right? I already know,” Jack says, holds a hand up. “This is you. This is your thing. You save people. You can’t walk away from a fight. I _know, _but you don’t need to put it all on the line for me.”

He half-expects Steve to interrupt him, to try to tell him it isn’t true, but he simply wrings his hands together. Long, slim fingers that Jack somehow finds more familiar than the rest of him.

“I know,” Steve says simply. “But I am.” 

“You shouldn’t. I’m not good people, Steve,” Jack says despite the way his chest is trying to loosen. Despite the way the buzz in his head begins to dull. “So, do yourself a favor and walk away. Don’t you get that they’re never going to stop looking for me? Someone’s always going to be waiting around the corner, and one day, they’ll learn how to get a step ahead of me. I’ve been treading water since I left DC. I won’t be able to do it forever.”

It’s true. Jack feels it in his bones. HYDRA will get their hands on him again, but maybe this time, they’ll want to be rid of him. Maybe they'll want to get rid of the thorn in their side, start fresh with some other poor bastard. 

“Jack, look at me.”

As gentle as anything, Steve reaches out. 

He squeezes Jack’s hand, flesh against metal, running his thumb across the little plates along Jack’s fingers, his knuckles, the spot between his thumb and forefinger.

Jack can’t feel it the way he would have on his flesh hand, but he _feels_ it. The artificial nerves aren’t so strong, but they’re enough for him to know the touch is there.

It shouldn’t feel good. 

It shouldn’t feel even remotely good, but it thrums in Jack’s veins, melts the ice trying to crystallize his blood.

“If you think you’re gonna drown,” Steve says, too quiet. Wounded. “Ain’t it time someone’s pulled you out?”

Jack doesn’t answer. Can’t answer.

_The brine of the river overwhelming his senses, a body pressed against his own as he swam until his body burned and ached and almost left him sinking, too. Swallowing salt water. His grip was tight around Steve’s middle. His head was heavy against Jack’s shoulder. **At least you won’t die alone. **_

“You say we knew each other,” Jack murmurs, swallows hard. “And I want to believe you, but...”

He doesn’t know how to allow himself to remember. Memories don’t bring a sense of hope, they only bring dread. Only the knowledge that they might be taken away as quickly as Jack got a hold of them.

“...still feels like it’s all gonna get ripped away.”

“No.” Steve’s voice is soft and urgent. “That’s not—that’s _over_, you hear me? If they want to try and come for you, let ‘em try, but no one’s getting their hands on you anymore.”

His fingers tighten around Jack’s, and he’s closer than before, close enough that Jack can see the beginnings of blond stubble on his chin.

“I’m helping you because I want to,” Steve continues. “I’m helping you because we were friends. Because you _are_ my friend.”

He said that before, too. He said it on the helicarrier, and let his shield spiral into the Potomac.

Jack’s throat is dry, breath caught somewhere inside it. “Your friend,” he echoes. He can feel Steve’s breath on his face, his knees knocking against his own.

“Well, yeah,” Steve murmurs, and this close, Jack can finally place what’s been etched into his face this entire time.

Longing.

“Steve,” Jack murmurs, and this time, it feels good on his tongue. Like a slow breath of hot, dry air at the Grand Canyon. Like the sweet, honey-soaked visions filling his head, filling his notebooks. “Steve, were we...?”

Despite the fear choking him, Jack turns his hand in Steve’s hold, lets his fingers lace with his own. 

Despite the fear choking him, Jack moves closer. 

And Steve pulls back. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and Jack can see that, yes, he is. He speaks like a knife is lodged in his throat. “Jack, I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“No, it’s—“ Jack swallows. He shakes his head. “I thought that—“

“You’re not wrong,” Steve says, and his eyes are set on Jack’s shoulder, his ear, anywhere but his eyes. “But I can’t take advantage of you.”

“Can’t take advantage of me,” Jack echoes. He breathes a humorless laugh. “What, you think I can’t make my own goddamn decisions?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Steve says, and brings his gaze back to Jack’s. “It’s just easy to lie about something like this. What if I was? What if we weren’t together, and I just told you we were?” 

Jack wants to pull away, but he doesn’t move. He feels frozen in place as it is.

With anyone else, it’s plausible, but what has Steve told him of this? He never showed any indication. Never let his eyes linger. No unnecessary touching. If anyone initiated anything— 

“Yeah, well, who kissed who, Steve?” Jack counters. “Tell me that. If you don’t want to do this, that’s different. We can pretend nothing ever happened, but if you’re doing this for my sake, it’s not helping either of us.”

Steve has nothing to say. He always goes quiet when he’s wrong. 

His hand has moved to the crook of Jack’s elbow, adam’s apple bobbing hard in his throat. He’s nervous, eyes wide and searching Jack’s face for _something_. Doubt, maybe. Apprehension. 

“I know you won’t lie to me,” Jack says, and knows it’s true down to his bones. “I trust you.”

Maybe he’s only just realized it. Maybe it’s the first time he’s allowed himself to. 

“I trust you,” Jack repeats. “Tell me the truth.”

Steve’s jaw works, and then, “I didn’t think you’d remember.” His breath is quick and trembling. His mouth barely moves as he speaks. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. It didn’t feel right, me being the one to tell you. I told myself that was your call. Even if you remembered and changed your mind.” 

It doesn’t make perfect sense, but it’s an answer. And Jack will take just about anything now.

He moves off of Steve, sitting beside him instead. As close as he’ll allow himself to. Steve’s hand lingers between them like he wants to touch, to pull Jack back to where he was. 

“How long did it last?” Jack asks, and he isn’t sure why he’s speaking quietly. No one can hear them. 

“Almost two years,” Steve says. “Up until you—“ 

“Yeah.” Jack’s chest tightens. “Figured that.” 

“Yeah,” Steve echoes.

“I thought you were gonna say longer than two years,” Jack says. “Feels a lot longer than that.”

Steve laughs, and it’s the most miserable sound Jack’s ever heard. “Wasn’t really easy to say how you felt about a guy back then,” he says. “It was always there. I don’t know when it started for you, but for me, it was for as long as I can remember. Just took a while for us to do anything about it.”

Then they were friends first, lovers second. Jack has a feeling he was the one to fall first. Or maybe it was Steve. It really must have taken them forever, because Jack would have remembered it when he remembered Steve before everything went to hell. 

That still doesn’t feel right, though. The thread tying he and Steve together can’t be explained so simply. 

“I don’t remember everything,” Jack says, and he can barely hear himself, not with the blood pounding in his ears. “I can’t remember things from last week sometimes, but this...” 

There’s a hand at the back of his neck, and he’s facing Steve again. Someone is holding their breath. It might be Jack, so he exhales, shaky and slow. Swallows thickly.

“...I think I feel this under my skin,” he murmurs.

That’s all it takes. 

Steve closes the distance between them before Jack can say another word, hands on either side of his face, and it’s like his hands are reaching _inside_ of Jack, taking hold of his ribcage, his lungs, his _blood_, and burrowing his way back inside.

Like he was never meant to leave there.

Jack’s eyes are wide open, staring at Steve’s closed ones, his lashes dark against his cheek. He almost wants the flood of memory. The flood that makes his eyes ache and his fingers itch for a pen, but it doesn’t come. Everything turns blissfully still.

He wouldn’t be able to speak if he tried, so he shuts his eyes and tries to pour everything he wants to say between them; the ache of familiarity, the longing he barely comprehends, the want coiling beneath his stomach.

Steve’s lips are warm and soft, fitting too easily against Jack’s now that he’s kissing back, and god, it’s like they’ve been doing this for _years_. 

Jack knows the rhythm of Steve’s body, but he can’t remember when or how he learned it. Somehow, he knows where he’s supposed to touch, and how he’s supposed do it. He knows Steve doesn’t like it gentle. Knows that kissing hungrily is the way to go, so that’s exactly what he does. 

He deepens it, and lets his body do the work for him, allows himself to relearn how to kiss and touch and how to make someone feel good. He licks at the seam of Steve’s mouth, pushing closer and splaying a hand at the back of his head, rasping his nails up against his scalp. 

Steve makes a low sound in his throat, and it goes directly to Jack’s dick, leaves him hardening in his jeans, shivering with it.

They break away, just for a second. Jack can’t help chasing Steve’s mouth. His chest is heaving against Jack’s, and Jack’s own body feels open and airy. There’s space in his chest to breathe.

“Sure you’re okay with this?” Steve asks, breathless.

The haze in Jack’s brain dissipates, if only slightly. The gnawing ache beneath his skin becomes less demanding. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Better’n okay.”

For once, it’s true.

They creep further up the bed, and Jack lets his boots thunk to the floor even as his insides sweep upward with nerves. Allows desire to prickle its way through his veins for the first time in god knows how long.

Jesus, when was the last time he kissed anyone? When was the last time _Steve_ kissed anyone?

It doesn’t matter. Everything feels too good. It feels so goddamn good and they haven’t even gotten started yet. Jack slides his hands up under the hem of Steve’s shirt. Over the smooth skin of his back. Burning hot. _Is he riled up or is he just made that way?_

Steve moves into the touch, poking hard and heavy through his jeans and into Jack’s thigh. Jack grabs his hip and grinds down against him, swallows down a needy sound.

“Oh, _God_, Buck,” Steve murmurs, dipping his head down to the crook of Jack’s neck for a second, and damn it, Jack doesn’t even _care_ anymore. Steve can call him whatever he wants as long as he stays right fucking here, as long as this doesn’t stop.

Jack tugs him up and kisses him again for good measure. Harder, maybe a too desperately, before tugging his shirt off.

Steve’s hands immediately move upward, touching, tracing, grabbing. He slides his hands up to Jack’s shoulders and does the same, fingers tracing around the tight pink tendrils of skin.

He wants to care, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he knows how to right now. 

“How long’s it been for you, Rogers?” Jack asks, head light and spinning as he leans back down.

Steve laughs, really laughs, and Jack feels it in his chest. He sounds almost at ease, smiling at Jack like he hung the damn moon. “Too long,” Steve says.

It’s contagious. He isn’t aware he’s close to smiling until Steve traces his mouth, the lines around it. “Me too.” 

A moment passes, and then Steve’s shirt is gone, thrown wherever Jack’s has fallen, and being skin to skin feels even better, if that’s possible. 

He would have considered just having this, but then Steve does something with his hips, hands gripping hard at Jack’s ass, and that’s the _last straw_.

“Get your fucking pants off,” Jack says, hoarse. His heart stutters in his chest. “I need to—I just—“

Steve looks torn between being surprised and thrilled. “Whatever you want,” he says quickly. “Whatever you want. I’m yours.” 

That shouldn’t light such a fire in him but it does. Douses Jack in gasoline and sets him ablaze.

“Oh, _fuck_,” he mumbles, less words and more a gravelly noise, a moan against Steve’s cheek, prickly against his mouth. It sends want spiking up further up his stomach, and if he doesn’t do something soon he thinks he’ll explode, burn up from the inside out. 

“You’re gonna kill me,” Jack says. He feels _giddy_ with it. “You’re gonna fucking kill me, I swear.”

-

Once their clothes are off, Jack lets Steve flip them over. Lets him press him down into the mattress and do whatever the hell he wants, because it’s only now that Jack’s realized how badly he’s needed someone to touch him. 

Steve’s hands are everywhere. His mouth is everywhere, trailing over Jack’s throat, his collarbones. Lingering over his chest and taking his nipple into his mouth. Sucking, biting, and leaving Jack aching, rubbing almost painfully against his stomach. Even breathing begins to send prickles of need through him. 

It takes time, Jack isn’t sure how much, but Steve finally moves, slotting their bodies together, and when he rolls his hips down, dick dragging hard against Jack’s, it’s impossible to hold back the sound he makes, thin and hoarse, in the back of his throat.

For a minute, Jack thinks he blanks out or that he’s gone over the edge without realizing it, but he comes to and realizes he’s still moving his hips, keeping up with Steve’s rhythm. The tension trying to coil in his body loosens and fades away.

He doesn’t think about how long it’s been for them, doesn’t think too hard on anything at all, because there’s too much to take in. All he can do is lose himself in the rhythm of their bodies, in the heat creeping up from the pit of his stomach, swelling like a wave.

And the slope of Steve’s body, the heat of his cock, the swell of his ass in Jack’s hands are a damn good distraction, anyway.

“You’re _killing_ me,” Jack says for what has to be the fifth time, voice low in his chest. “Killing me.” 

“Want me to stop?” Steve asks, but he has a cockeyed grin on his mouth. 

“Like hell I do,” Jack says. He thrusts his hips up, and Steve’s head dips forward, a breathy moan slipping past his lips. He steals another kiss, slow and filthy, just because he can. “Come here." 

Jack reaches between them and grips their dicks in his right hand, hips stuttering into his own fist as he hisses out a curse, muffled by Steve’s choked off moan. He sucks a bruise into Steve’s collarbone, his throat. His rhythm is jerky and slow because his hand shakes so badly, but then Steve’s hand covers Jack’s, makes the slide smoother. Harder.

Jack’s gotten himself off before, but it didn’t feel like this. 

It didn’t feel this good. It was just relearning something he didn’t realize he’d forgotten. But now, all he can focus on is Steve’s dick rubbing against his own. The slip of pre-come between them making things more intense, leaving molten heat chasing its way through his veins.

Jack’s left hand grips Steve’s shoulder. His toes curl tight against the bedspread, knees bracketing a slim pair of hips. He tries to ignore the pull behind his navel, the way his balls tighten up. _Not now, this can’t end now. _

But, he’s gasping anyway, moaning before he realizes it. He might say Steve’s name, but he isn’t sure. Need is setting him on fire all over again, leaving his eyes blurring and pricking hot with moisture. Steve has to know he’s close, because he’s stroking rougher, faster, and Jack chases the grip of his hand with his hips, sweat beading at the back of his neck. 

He has to bite on Steve’s shoulder to keep from crying out, his own hand is barely moving now. It’s all Steve, the warmth of his palm, the grip of his fingers, squeezing Jack’s hand, squeezing their cocks. His voice is in Jack’s ear, saying something he can barely process.

And Jack’s vision flashes white. 

He’s coming into Steve’s fist, over his fingers, on his dick, and Steve never stops the rhythm of his fist, stroking Jack through it until his muscles turn to mush and he softens in Steve’s hand. 

He barely notices when Steve comes, when he splashes hot onto his stomach. All Jack can hear is the choked, muffled sound he makes. Feel it against his chest. The ghost of his breath against his nipples.

Jack wipes his hand on the sheets before he threads slack fingers into Steve’s hair. Scratches at his scalp again. 

This feels familiar. Coming down, touching absently. Either lying on the bed or draped over Steve, buried inside him. God, he wants that. Wants it bad. 

The bed shifts. Steve’s moving closer, further up Jack’s body. It’s enough to snap him out of his thoughts.

“Hey,” Steve murmurs after a long, long while. His mouth is red, neck rubbed just as dark from Jack’s beard. His hand is steadying against Jack’s cheek. “You with me?”

_I don’t know_, Jack thinks about saying. Instead, he kisses Steve, gripping the nape of his neck firmly. His insides feel warm with it, limbs almost too loose.

“Right here,” Jack murmurs, and it feels like the right answer. “Not going anywhere.” 

\- 

Everything else after that is a blur, but it feels good. Warm and dim and slow, bodies tangled together until Jack isn’t sure what belongs to who. 

-

They check out the next morning, and Jack feels...well, he doesn’t feel _bad_.

No static. No intrusive thoughts. No memories trying to creep in. 

A flood of memory would make sense. He expected it, but for once, his head is startlingly clear. The silence between he and Steve isn’t uncomfortable as they drive through spots of rain and clear sky. It’s a little easier to breathe, even though Jack can’t shake the feeling that he’s still missing something.

“So,” Steve starts over the chatter of other people, the sound of a grill. “Where do you think you’re headed next?”

He specifically doesn’t say _we_, even though he wants to. Jack can see it. 

They’re sat in a booth in the corner of a Waffle House in Amarillo, Texas. It’s packed. Bright with afternoon sunlight and ringing with noise. Any other time, Jack would duck out and find somewhere else, or sit toward the back, but they blend in fine enough. With this many people, no one gives either of them a second glance. 

Jack shrugs. “Wherever,” he says. “Wherever’s quiet. Maybe try to head Midwest, or find a way out of the country. Not really a walk in the park, though.” 

“I could probably help you out there,” Steve says, like it’s nothing.

Jack catches his eye. “You mean your friends could,” he says. “All your old SHIELD buddies could.”

Steve visibly deflates. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’d rather take my chances on my own,” Jack says. “I know how to keep my eye out for the right people.”

He knows he’s being stubborn, but he doesn’t care. Fucking isn’t going to make him a goddamn amenable ray of sunshine.

Steve rolls his napkin up in his fist, leaves it in his empty plate. “Guess you would,” he says. There’s no venom behind it, it’s just the truth. “But, it’s just knowing who you’re dealing with. I can help you, and no one has to know about it. You want to fall off the grid for good, I can try to shake whoever’s looking for you.”

“I don’t know,” Jack says, too quickly. “Steve, you already know they’re two sides of the same goddamn coin, you don’t know who’s who, don’t know who wants what.”

“I know,” Steve says. “But everyone who wasn’t on our side is gone. Either missing or dead. The few of us who actually—“

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Jack snaps. “All right? It’s all the same. It’s _always_ been the same. Whoever figured it out didn’t last long. Hell, _Carter_ didn’t even...”

The words stick in his throat. “Carter didn’t,“ he tries again. “But I—“ 

“Jack?” Steve says, and there’s alarm in his voice. Jack can’t answer him. His tongue feels thick in his mouth.

_I let her go_, he tries to say, but his jaw turns to stone.

It was 1951. Carter didn’t know anything yet, but she was getting close to something big. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop, which is why she was ready when he came for her.

_A gun, sleek and small, was pointed at his head, and then, “Barnes,” she said, staring at him like she’d seen a ghost. Her eyes were wide, the gun in her hand lowering only a fraction. Blood was oozing from her temple. “Barnes, my **god**.”_

_It was like a current of electricity to the temple. _ _“No,” he said. It was half true. The tac gear was choking him. English felt both right and wrong on his tongue. “No.”_

_“What have they done to you?”_

_“Doesn’t matter. You need to go.” It spilled from his mouth before he could stop it, and he didn’t even know why he’d said it. He never faltered. Never hesitated to finish a mission. “You know why they sent me. You know why I’m here."_

_Peggy sobered, just a little. “I do,” she said, straightened her back and stepped forward, glass crunching beneath her heels. “I read the file on the project, but I had no—Barnes, if you’d—“_

_“**No**,” <strike>Barnes</strike> the soldier choked. His brain was still murky with whatever the doctor injected him with, his body was on fire. “No, I go AWOL and they’ll just kill you anyway. I have to be the one to tell them you have no intel. Then they won’t sic me on you, or him.”_

_Peggy’s brows furrowed together. “Who?”_

_The soldier knew the answer, even though he couldn’t say it. Peggy knew, too, because her eyes widened, wet and glassy. Carter was tough as nails. She didn’t cry. “Oh, you don’t know,” she breathed. “You don’t **know**.”_

_He must have spoke. He couldn’t hear himself._

_She told him. _ _He couldn’t hear it, but he knew, because_ _ his chest caved in, his limbs were too heavy and failing him. He wished he could plunge into the Arctic, freeze up there himself._

_“Shoot me,” he said, voice separated from his throat, from the rest of his body. “And get the hell out of here. There’s no coming back from this. I won’t— I can’t be who I was.”_

_Peggy Carter was an unshakable force, and she was someone who would always remain a step ahead of everyone, even with darkness creeping in at every corner._

_But by letting her do this, she’d be able to stay on top. For now, at least. The moment she left SHIELD, it would fall to pieces._

_The bullet buried itself into his stomach, and he fell backward hard. Her footsteps were the last thing he heard._

“I let her go,” Jack mumbles, and then he jolts back against the—the passenger seat. The world around him is a blur. “I let her...”

When did they get back in the car?

“Oh. Hey,” Steve croaks. He’s driving, but he’s already slowing down. The sun bakes Jack’s skin, even with the closed windows. Even with the air conditioner cooling the sweat on his skin. “Hey, there you are.”

He pulls over on the side of the highway, and then he’s turning in his seat. His eyes are wide, red, and dry. 

The sun is lower, deep yellow against dusky blue. 

“Where—” Jack swallows thickly, head spinning. Heart pounding. “Steve, how long have I been...”

Steve’s composure falters, just for a second. “A few hours,” he says quietly. “Lost you for a few hours.”

Jack’s brain is still a mess. It feels like coming out of cryo. He scrubs a hand over his face hard, tries not to think about it.

Steve doesn’t look at him. His knuckles are white around the steering wheel, and then he’s pushing the door open. “Sorry, I just need to,” he says, and gets out of the car instead of finishing. He shuts the door hard before he leans against it, back to the window.

Jack shuts his eyes, rests his head back against the seat. He tries not to look at himself in the rearview mirror. Tries to ignore the clammy paleness of his skin, the shadows beneath his eyes.

It’s too cramped in the car. His legs itch to move.

A pickup rushes past. When the road is clear, Jack opens the door, makes his way over to Steve. The air feels good on his skin, even with the bone deep aches he feels.

He breathes in. The air smells of warmth, of something floral. It makes things feel a little sharper. Cuts through the haze.

“That happen a lot?” Steve asks, eyes on the craggy mountains, far ahead of them.

“Not like that,” Jack answers. He leans against the car, as close as to Steve as he dares, and shoves his hands into his pockets, picks at a loose thread inside. “Not for that long.”

Steve swallows hard, nods. “Guess I’m right to think you don’t remember much from it,” he says. 

He’s caught in the dying light, and it streaks over his skin in deep oranges and blues. Even with the weight on his shoulders, the grief painted all over his face, he almost looks beautiful. 

It’s a terrifying thought. 

It tugs at the thread that ties them together, pulls on Jack’s ribcage painfully.

Jack licks his lips, tries to savor the hot air on his tongue. It doesn’t taste like it smells. It tastes like bile and exhaust. 

His eyes are zeroed in on yellow-brown earth, rocks crunching beneath his boots. His mouth is thick with ash when he says, “You should go.”

For a second, he thinks Steve doesn’t hear him, but then he turns to face Jack, eyes wide. “What?” he asks.

It’s not anger. It’s not sadness. It’s hurt. It’s fear. It shows in his eyes, plain as day. _I can’t lose you. Don’t make me lose you._

_He counted Steve’s breaths, wouldn’t let himself sleep, just focused on the rattling wheezes that came with every rise and fall of Steve’s chest. Wrapped his arms around a skinny torso like he might be able to squeeze the sickness right out of him._

_“Can’t lose you. Don’t make me lose you,” he murmured into sweat soaked hair over and over again. Steve didn’t hear him. Not even when Jack spoke into his good ear. _

“You heard me,” Jack says. He breathes out, pretends he doesn’t feel the tremor that comes with it. “You need to leave. You being here, us being—you’re gonna see something you don’t wanna see, all right? It’s gonna get ugly. Real fucking ugly, so save yourself the trouble.”

“And leave you here? In the middle of nowhere?” Steve bursts out. Now, he’s angry. Hell, _offended_. He’s stepping in front of Jack, flooding his vision and obscuring the mountains. “You said it yourself, you’ve never been out that long. What if it happens again? What if you get yourself killed like that? Don’t you think you need someone watching your back?” 

Jack grinds his teeth together. “If it makes you feel any better,” he starts. “You can drop me at a flophouse or something. I can get by just fine on my own.”

“You don’t have to,” Steve says, fucking _unshakable__ stubborn piece of shit_. Something clicks in Jack’s head, and he hates Steve for it. “I promise, Jack. You don’t have to.”

“You don’t _get it_,” Jack tries to yell, but his voice is strangled and caught in his throat. His limbs feels watery, blood too thin. He moves to point his finger in Steve’s face, but he— he doesn’t. He clutches his shoulder instead. “You don’t fucking get it. You’re _poison_. You’re...you’re blood in the goddamn _water_ for me, and when they get a whiff of you they’ll...“ 

“Hey, look at me,” Steve says quickly, and Jack wonders what he looks like. Far off and dead behind the eyes. “Look at me. You know where we are?” 

Is he slipping? Is he losing touch? He has to be. The ground shifts beneath his feet. “Shit.” Jack swallows hard. “I—Texas? We were in Texas.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he looks a little relieved, but not by much. The memory doesn’t help. Jack feels worse than before. “Okay, good. I just...stay with me, huh?”

His breath rattles. He tastes bile in the back of his throat.

Everything here is wrong. The ground. The air. His teeth in his mouth. It all feels _wrong_. His eyes are burning and wet, and Steve is grabbing his shoulders, because Jack’s knees are buckling. Everything shakes, even his prosthetic, which makes no sense. The goddamn thing is made of metal.

Sick rises hot in Jack’s throat. “Oh, _God_,” he mumbles, and shoves Steve away, collapsing to his knees in the dirt, fingers digging into it, nails splitting.

The foulness spews from his mouth the moment he dips his head forward. It chokes him, throat seizing up, body failing—_you choked on it once on the chair but they kept shocking you you felt yourself dying and you were relieved you were so goddamn relieved_—there are black spots invading his vision, his feet going numb, legs going numb, grip turning to mush.

Then, there are hands on him, and he’s too weak to push them away. They gather his hair away from his face and rub the back of his neck with a cool, soothing touch. 

Steve is speaking to him, Jack can feel his voice vibrating through his back, but he can’t hear it. His ears feel stuffed with cotton, head swimming. 

He isn’t sure how long he sits there, trying to expel whatever’s trying to get out, but it’s long enough that Jack has nothing left to give and he’s dry heaving, stomach spasming painfully. 

“Steve,” he finally says, and it makes him feel sick all over again. Every breath is acrid and wet. He wipes his mouth roughly on his sleeve. “_Steve_.” 

“Right here,” Steve says, closer than before. “Not going anywhere, pal.”

That doesn’t help. Jack resists the urge to gag. He feels feverish. Rubbery and weak. _Curled on the floor of a cell broken ribs and a brain stuffed with cotton, faces he can’t make out and **if fritzie makes him work tomorrow i guarantee he won’t last his shift**—_

His hands are shaking, so he fists them into his hair. He wants to rip it out from the root in dark clumps. Toss it to the wind. He wants to dig into his brain and understand _what the hell the bastards did to him._

“Everything’s _fucked_,” Jack chokes. He can’t see straight. He can’t think. His heart beats so hard it might just stop completely. He hopes it does. “My head, it’s all—all fucking swiss cheese, it doesn’t make any sense, but it all just keeps fucking coming _back. _All of it. The good, the bad, and I can’t...I can’t stop it. I don’t _know_ how to _stop it_.”

“You don’t have to know anything. You don’t have to do anything,” Steve says, in such a goddamn pitiful voice. His hands are prying Jack’s fingers from his hair, slow and deliberate movements. Too careful. Like he’s defusing a bomb. “Just let me help you. Just for now.”

_Just for now._

Jack lets his hands fall, and then Steve’s hands are on Jack’s face, _assessing_ him. _No, _Jack thinks. 

No, he’s not.

He’s just...looking at him, making sure he’s okay, eyes full of something raw and searing that Jack doesn’t want to name. 

Steve has looked at him like that before. Jack doesn’t know why he knows that, but he remembers pain and fog and needles and Steve—too big, not right, not what <strike>Bucky</strike> Jack knew, but he was bright and warm like Arizona sunlight and eyes the same color as the sky. 

It’s too much.

“Did you remember something?” Steve asks gingerly. “That what happened?” 

“Maybe,” Jack says, gaze jumping from Steve’s eyes to his chin. “It didn’t make any sense. None of it ever makes any sense. I’m trying to put it together, but I can’t get a handle on it. Every time I’ve ever understood it, they—I fucking _told you_ I feel like—“ 

_Like I’m going to lose it all again._

“I can’t go back,” Jack says, half to himself, shivering despite the heat. He’s delirious with it. He shakes his head. “I can’t go back there, Steve, I can’t. I _can’t—“_

“Jesus, just come here,” Steve whispers urgently, and then he’s gathering Jack up into his arms so tightly it almost hurts, but Jack hurts as it is. In his guts, his head, his chest. 

He feels like he’s turning to _smoke_, so he holds on tight, wrapping his arms around Steve’s back and digging his fingers in like he’s the only thing keeping Jack tethered to the ground. 

Steve’s touch is unnervingly gentle at the back of Jack’s head, fingers splayed against his skull, gentle in his hair. His heart beats fast and strong against Jack’s chest, and Jack could cry with relief. He actually might be, but if Steve hears the wet hitches in Jack’s breath, he doesn’t say a word. 

If he feels the tears leaking into the hollow of his neck, soaking into his shirt, he doesn’t say a word.

If anything, he holds Jack tighter. 

“You’re not going back,” Steve says into his ear, and it’s strangled. Quiet. Jack’s breath comes out in shards. “It’s _over_. You’re _done_. No one’s coming near you. You’re not doing anything you don’t want to do. Not again, I promise.”

Jack doesn’t trust himself to speak. He forces himself to breathe, squeezes his eyes shut against the sun and the sand blowing in his face. 

His body is trembling, failing him. The sound that rips from his throat is painful. Choked off and miserable and muffled against Steve’s shoulder. It feels like he’s slotting a knife between Jack’s ribs and twisting. He might as well be.

Steve’s touch is burning hot against his skin, but it doesn’t matter, because Jack can’t bear to be cold anymore. 

-

It feels like hours before he can move off the ground. Dust coats his jeans and his jacket, the toes of his boots, and rubs on the cloth seat of the car. Too much color again. In this light, it looks red; like Jack’s ink pen, like the star on his prosthetic, like the blood caught under his fingernails.

Has anyone recovered the agents’ bodies? Or are they still there, rotting in the sun? Has anyone caught his trail?

Jack tries not to think about it.

Streetlights whizz by as Steve drives. Jack watches billboards and mile markers pass by, head pressed against the window. He thinks he sleeps in snatches, because Steve doesn’t speak for a long time. He just drives.

He looks at Jack occasionally, when he thinks he’s being discreet, with something deep and tired behind his eyes. Maybe he’s sick of running, too. How long has _he_ been running? 

Steve is a soldier, too. He was used for an agenda, too. The greatest goddamn weapon, greatest show of cornfed, salt-of-the-earth American pride the army could conjure up. Jack wonders what would have happened if Steve had decided not to pick up the shield when he came out of the ice. If he woke without a will to fight. 

_Would they have fried his brain, too?_

If his memories are right, if everything Steve has said is true and their positions were switched, would Jack go to the lengths Steve is going to now? 

\- 

The silence breaks, and Jack learns that there’s a safe house just outside Fort Worth. Abandoned, apparently. He isn’t sure who Steve found this out from, but he has an inkling. _Another flash of red._

“You know,” Steve says, like he can hear the cogs turning in Jack’s head. “Just because we’re using something of theirs, it doesn’t mean you’re getting caught up in anything.” 

“Guess not,” Jack says, voice hoarse for too many reasons to name. He keeps his eyes on the road. “You know, for a guy who was all about doing what’s right, you don’t seem to have any issue with breaking into government property. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“Yours,” Steve says. 

-

The safe house is a goddamn matchbox. 

Not that Jack is looking for luxury, but god, is it _small_.

It’s enough to sustain someone for a few days, just to duck under radar. There’s canned food and bottles of water. A first aid kit. A fold out couch and a shower.

“I can sleep on the floor, if you want me to,” Steve says, like Jack hasn’t already seen him naked.

Jack shrugs. He’s eating a can of mixed fruit, and it makes him feel worse instead of better. Makes his stomach gnaw at itself harder, like a punishment for putting off eating for so long. “Sharing a sofa bed is better than sleeping outside a burger joint,” he says drily. “Take a guess what I was doing last month.”

Steve is checking the place for bugs, so Jack can’t see his face, but he can see the tension in his shoulders. “I wish you came and found me,” Steve says. “I would have given you somewhere to stay.”

“Well, tough shit,” Jack says. “I put you in the hospital, and I was halfway through Virginia by then.” 

“Well, say it was different,” Steve presses on. “Say I was fine. Would you have come?” 

“I don’t know,” Jack says truthfully. “Maybe. If I stood in DC, but, I don’t think I would have. Wasn’t really a great place to be in the long run.” 

Somewhere, he can hear a few cars rush past. A siren. They’re in a decently isolated area. Enough cover to keep them treading water for a few days, if they need it. “I needed to be alone,” Jack continues. “I don’t think I would have figured out as much as I did. And I don’t think I’m doing too bad, considering, y’know, everything.”

Steve stops combing through the apartment. The place is clean. Jack pretends he isn’t relieved. “You’re doing great,” Steve says, sits down on the sofa beside Jack. “Things like this take years. You’ve been out here almost two months.” 

“Yeah,” Jack says absently. He sets the can on the table, tasting the sickly sweetness of pears in the back of his throat, and stares at his boots, tracking dirt on the rug. “Look, I’m gonna say something, and just...tell me if I’m right, okay?”

Steve looks over at him. He probably thinks Jack is going to crack all over again. He’s been walking on goddamn eggshells since they got back in the car. It’s annoying. “Sure,” he says. “Shoot.” 

“You were little. Smaller.” Jack almost doesn’t want to know the answer. His mind keeps tipping back into the memory of a frail body with wheezing breaths. “Right? I keep...seeing you scrawny. Shorter. Or maybe, that’s not you, I don’t know. Feels like it is, but everything’s still...”

“Scrambled,” Steve finishes.

“Scrambled,” Jack says tiredly, and leans back into the couch. “All over the place.”

Steve mirrors him. His knee almost bumps against Jack’s when he settles back. “What else do you remember?” he asks. 

He hasn’t flat out asked. It’s jarring. It’s a handler question. 

Sometimes, when Jack remembered something, whoever was in charge of him would take the reins and paint an imaginary picture, tell him it meant nothing or he’s remembering the life of one of his targets. Say he read too deeply into a file and internalized it.

Steve isn’t taking the reins. He’s just nudging Jack in the right direction. Letting him go down the path if he wants to. 

“Just flashes,” Jack says, which is technically true. “I have some of it written down, but it makes less sense on paper. Hell, _I_ can barely make sense of it on a good day.” 

Better to discourage him. The last thing Jack needs is for Steve to get a deeper look into the jumbled mess of his head.

“But, it’s little things, I guess,” Jack continues. His mouth itches to perk upward, but it doesn’t. Not quite, because he’s on the verge of another flood, and that can go south quickly. Leave him lost in his head again. “Your...mom’s name was Sarah. You don’t like sugar in your coffee. You were good at sniffing out trouble. Stubborn little asshole.”

Steve doesn’t say a word. Jack has a funny feeling he’s holding his breath. 

“You were sick,” Jack says, and tries not to get lost in that memory. Sweat-soaked hair and rattling lungs. “A lot. Almost died on me a few times. And...am I wrong? I can see it, but I don’t even know if that was actually you. You said it, my head’s still scrambled.” 

_But your eyes are the same, _Jack almost says._Your voice is his voice and his hands are your hands. They ripped you to shreds and sewed you back together with new thread and new pieces and tried to make you theirs._

For once, it’s Steve who can’t meet Jack’s eyes. His jaw works and he swallows. For less than a second, he looks incredibly worn. Jack wonders if Steve feels his decades weighing on him, too.

“Do you,” Steve says, so far away, and choked off. He flattens his mouth into a tight line, and then meets Jack’s eyes. His knee bumps against his. “You really remember all that?”

Jack swallows the rush of hope he feels. Tries to calm the racket in his chest. “I remember enough,” he says. “Some of it...it’s like I _know_ it’s mine, even though it doesn’t feel like it. I just know that everything I do, everywhere I _look_, you’re there.”

Steve was in the craggy cliffs of the Grand Canyon and the brine of the Potomac River. He was in the blood on Jack’s hands and the sweat on his skin and the pound of his heart. Jack already knows what that means, but the words to say it are stuck inside of him.

He’s hit something concrete again. He knows it. Feels it. Otherwise, Steve wouldn’t touch him. He wouldn’t fit his palm over Jack’s jaw or ease him into a kiss, nose pressing against his cheek.

It’s firm, it leaves Jack’s insides turning molten, but it’s not leading anywhere.

It still leaves him craving more. 

They’re touching everywhere. Chest to chest, legs tangled, clutching at arms and shoulders. The couch is too small, Jack thinks as he chases Steve’s mouth—soft and wet and hot—like a lifeline, and Steve is kissing him like it’s the end of the goddamn world. Kissing him instead of talking, Jack realizes. 

If Steve Rogers willingly shuts his trap, something is wrong. 

“Hey,” Jack mumbles when he tastes salt in his mouth, kisses Steve again, even though it’s turning slippery. “Hey. Don’t. Come on, Steve.” 

It’s harder to let go, to move too far. This is different compared to the night before. 

This isn’t relearning how to be with another person, or how to want and be wanted. This is the fibers of he and Steve trying to knit themselves back together.

Steve swallows thickly, fingers tightening at Jack’s shoulder. He pulls back just enough that Jack can see the tear tracks on his face. 

_You’re the only one allowed to see him like this._

Only him. Not even Sarah was allowed. But, <strike>Bucky</strike> Jack knew he got that from her. She would rub a hand over her eyes, take a breath, and move on, no matter what it was. Steve was the same, and god forbid you thought any differently.

But, Jack saying his name seems to make it worse. Steve takes a shaky breath, rests his forehead against Jack’s. “Sorry,” he croaks. “I just...” 

“Shut up,” Jack says quietly, because he doesn’t know how to talk gentle. Maybe he did once, but that’s something he doubts he’ll get back. He runs the thumb of his prosthetic over the short hairs at the base of Steve’s neck. “Just shut up.” 

Fat fucking chance of that. Steve presses a kiss at the corner of Jack’s mouth. The side of his face. His pulse point. “I missed you,” Steve says into his skin, breath hot on his ear. “I missed you so much.”

It hurts more than Jack is willing to admit. His breath is short and labored when he says, “I know,” and shifts until he can catch Steve’s lips again. The couch is too small, but he pushes Steve back against it, anyway. “I know.”

Maybe Jack himself wasn’t aware he had anyone to miss, but his body knew. His blood and his bones and his skin knew. In Siberia, the fingers of his flesh hand tingled with phantom itches, a craving to reach out, until the feeling was zapped away, and he stopped looking for whatever it was.

“I missed you too,” Jack murmurs, and nearly chokes on his own grief. “I didn’t even know you, I still don’t, but I missed you.” 

-

They don’t separate for long. It’s only to get rid of their clothes, to fold the bed out.

It’s rickety and lumpy and squeaks to all hell, but there’s no one listening. It’s just him and Steve and their breaths between them. 

“We didn’t do this before?” Jack asks, fingers clenched against Steve’s hip, body tight with anticipation even though they haven’t even gotten started. “In Brooklyn?”

_Brooklyn_. It rolls off his tongue so easily. A little rat trap of an apartment small as this in Red Hook. Cats yowling outside. Mrs. O’Leary and her husband fighting. Steve and the scritch scratch of a pencil on paper. God, Jack’ chest feels full with it. He might burst if he remembers anything else.

“No,” Steve says into Jack’s mouth. He’s still off kilter, but better than before. “Never. I wanted to, but no.“

“Jesus, what a couple of fucking yellow bellies,” Jack says, and Steve laughs at that. Jack does too. It feels strange. “Both of us.”

“You said it best,” Steve says, and brings Jack closer, if that’s even possible. “War makes you selfish.”

War makes you stop taking shit for granted. 

That’s why, hidden behind the bar of a bombed out pub, with ears ringing from an air raid, he grabbed Steve by the shirtfront and kissed him so hard it was painful. Tasted like blood and soot. He remembers not caring if Steve never talked to him again. They were almost done for, so Jack’s head wasn’t screwed on too straight.

He remembers being holed in a too-nice hotel room _<strike>(thank Christ for Peggy Carter)</strike>_ afterward, shaking for hours, even with the softness of a bed beneath him and a stomach filled with a hot meal for the first time in months. The explosions were still rumbling in his bones, the roaring sirens and the whistle of bombs. He felt tainted with fear, as ripe and raw as the stench of death in his mouth. Lodged in his nose.

And that’s when Steve stumbled in, clean of the dirt and blood, smelling like soap, but looking as godawful as Jack felt, and kissed him like a drowning man. 

Even then, without knowing a thing about where to start, their bodies knew each other. Just like they do now. 

So, of course, Steve doesn’t protest when Jack slots himself between his legs, doesn’t protest even as Jack stalls.

A thought, fleeting, slips in. “I don’t think we have any—“ Jack starts.

“We’ll make it work,” Steve says. “Never had a problem with it before.”

_Freezing mud and the clink of a belt and the wet heat of Steve’s mouth around <strike>Bucky’s</strike> fingers before he pushed one, slick with spit, into him, dizzy with need, swallowing down Steve’s sounds and his own, tasting blood and sweat— _

“Then I want you.” 

It spills from Jack’s lips like water, and he’s all too aware of the heat burning low in his body, resisting the urge to touch himself, to grind down against Steve and chase the friction with him like they did before. “Wanna be in you,” he continues. “I feel like I’m going nuts with it.”

Steve pulls him in. This kiss leaves Jack blindsided, and he grabs onto Steve like he might fall, fingers twisting in his shirt. He’s warm and real in Jack’s hands, and decades and mountains away, but he’s _here_. 

“Stay put,” Jack says, and Steve understands what he means, because it’s tender when he brings their mouths back together, when he slides his fingers into Jack’s hair and loosens it from its tie. “I mean it.” 

“Not going anywhere,” Steve says. Jack believes him. 

Goddamn it, he does. 

\- 

They make it work.

It’s uncomfortable, but they take it slow. There’s nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be, so time stretches and shifts before it becomes entirely meaningless. 

Jack’s left arm rests on the pillow beside Steve’s head until Steve drags it down to touch, metal against smooth skin. 

Steve should have scars. He should be riddled with scars—bullet holes and stab wounds and cuts—and so should Jack. _Christ, what the hell did they do to us?_

Streetlights flood inside, even through the blinds, leaving Steve’s face, his chest, striped in gold. It stripes over Jack’s good hand, and he watches it for a moment as he lines himself up, fingers splayed in the center of Steve’s chest. A five-point star. 

He ducks down, forehead pressed to Steve’s, mouth nearly grazing his, and pushes inside. 

Jack curses when he notices he’s already halfway in. He forces himself to move slower, gripping Steve’s hips. He breathes, in and out, and a pair of hands grab at his ass, pushing him in until he’s buried to the goddamn hilt in Steve, a moan bordering on a sob pushing its way out of him. He’s lost. Drunk on the heat and the tightness of Steve clenching around him.

And as hard as Jack tries to stay in the present, his mind slips to the past. 

He thinks of trenches and bedrolls and biting his fist in the woods, he thinks of a room above a tavern in Paris and a mattress on the floor. Steve’s face, flushed hot and sweaty. He thinks of whispering in Steve’s ear, tender skin of the lobe between his teeth. _“Can’t have this with anyone else. __Not Carter, not anyone. No one knows you like I do. ‘S you and me. You’re it. You’re it for me. Lemme look at you, baby. Let me see you.”_

The rhythm they fall into is too familiar. Too easy. Easier than breathing. The sweat on Jack’s skin, the weight of Steve’s arm around his shoulders, his nails digging at Jack’s back and his knees against his hips, is something animal and needy and _human_.

“Look at me,” Jack says before he can stop himself. He licks his palm and wraps his hand around Steve, relishes in the heavy, thick heat of him against his fingers. “Let me see you.”

Jack’s hips are shaking, just a little, but he keeps his head above water. Avoids the persistent pull behind his navel, biting back another curse as he thrusts forward hard, twists his wrist and thumbs over the head of Steve’s dick, slick with pre-come.

It only takes two, three, four pumps before Steve goes over the edge, in ropes over Jack’s fist, but it only makes Jack stroke him faster, harder, until he softens, nails digging into Jack’s skin, cursing into the too-heavy air around them.

“Get over here,” Steve says breathlessly, leaning upward, hands on either side of Jack’s face. Jack meets him halfway, kisses him sloppily, twisting his fingers in Steve’s hair. He makes a broken sound into it when Steve’s hips move upward into Jack’s thrusts, meeting him every single time. 

“I’m right there,” Jack mumbles, knowing how wrecked he sounds and not caring. “Fuck, Steve, I’m—“ 

He comes hard, biting at Steve’s jaw, eyes stinging, breath hitching. He knows he trails into a moan, but he feels it rather than hears it. 

He’s more focused on the way his body is uncoiling itself, leaving him slack, brain milky and slow, as he settles, mouth dragging down Steve’s chest. His heart is pounding hard against Jack’s cheek, arms heavy and secure around him.

Time stretches again, turns liquid. He chases Steve’s mouth for a while, loses himself in the familiar path of his hands, and after a while, he even feels a stir in the pit of his stomach, but exhaustion is dragging him into a warm haze he tries to fight against because god, he wants more. 

He wants so much more, and he knows that he could have it. That this could just keep going until Jack is sore with it, but it doesn’t go any further.

“Stay put,” he says again, against the hollow of Steve’s throat. “Swear to God, Rogers.”

Jack is aware of two things when he falls asleep: a scratchy blanket over his shoulders, and the fact that, for the first time, his name feels wrong. 

\- 

Jack’s eyes flip open almost mechanically to a world of dusky blue; with the ghost of pain rushing upward from the soles of his feet and his breath rushing from his lungs. It’s strange. Senseless. The ache in his muscles feels ancient.

It slips away before he can make sense of it, but as he comes back to himself, he half expects to feel a cold forest floor beneath him, or clothes damp with snow sticking to his body, but it’s only the warmth of the bed and Steve, grasping Jack’s shoulder too tightly to be asleep.

“You okay?” Steve asks. Jack can feel it against his cheek. 

It was not a good dream, Jack knows that, but it was far from the blood-soaked nightmares he has of Siberia and Leningrad, of Lithuania and Austria. His throat isn’t raw from screaming. 

He can remember his goddamn name. 

“Yeah,” Jack rasps, barely above a whisper, and means it. There’s a fine tremor running through his entire body. “Just...yeah, I’ll be fine.”

Despite that, he lets Steve pull him closer.

He feels anchored, even if it’s only for right now. And if it’s partly because he can feel the warmth of Steve’s chest against his back, the beat of his heart against his spine, he’ll learn how to make sense of how he feels about it later.

\- 

Jack’s notebook makes more sense, now that he looks at it. It’s chaos, sure, but it’s chaos he can understand.

Throughout the morning, he writes what he can in bullet points, leaving room to fill in details later. He has one entire section for the present, and he doesn’t remember making it, but it’s mostly blank, so he gets to work on it. Fills in the past few days with whatever might slip away. It’s an even mix of red and green ink. 

It doesn’t send him spiraling into a migraine, doesn’t leave him losing any time.

A rumbling buzz against the table snaps him out of it, and Steve—despite being out cold seconds before—shoots from the bed, snatches the phone up. “Rogers,” he says quickly, free hand resting against the tabletop, voice still rough with sleep. He huffs. “No, I was just...yeah, okay, yeah. You got me.” 

It’s a bad connection, because even with Jack’s enhanced hearing, he can barely make out who’s on the other end. Just the vague, muffled sound of a woman’s voice. 

Natasha Romanov, he thinks. But that’s not her real name, is it? Why does it sound wrong? _God, **think**_. Eyes green like the ink of his pen, red like—

_This was against protocol. _ _ _

_**She’s not a child, she’s a weapon and must be handled as such,** they told him. She was small and swift and deadly like a blade. Her hair was bright red against the black of her pea coat, hiding the blood on her clothes. She was not more than eight years old. _

_He pitied her and didn’t know why. He was the watchful eye on her mission. They slipped from the Bolshoi and into a square, covered by the evening and the crowds of people. He bought her a vatrushka from a stand they’d passed by, and she ate it slowly, sat on a bench in a park and staring him down, as if she was waiting for some sort of trick. The children of the Red Room were not given much reward. She told him this as she wiped crumbs from her face, smeared them on her coat._

_“Вот почему это должно быть секретом,” he told her, and put a finger to his lips. “Между нами, ты понимаешь, Наталья?”_

_For someone so young, her expressions were expertly controlled. Not even he could manage that. His handlers read his face like a book. But he knew, in some secret part of his brain hidden from conditioning, that this was the right thing to do. _

_Natalia mimed zipping her mouth shut. “Да секрет,” she said, and smiled. It looked both right and wrong on her. Her eyes were too old for her face._

It’s not a bad memory. It’s just old. Buried deep down in his head. Maybe there were other missions with her, but he can’t recall them. A part of him doesn’t really want to.

“Any leads on your end?” Steve’s voice is a welcome interruption, but reality is sharp and almost too clear. He’s coming back toward the bed now, and for whatever reason, Jack can’t move. Can’t meet his eyes, even though Steve is trying to find his gaze. He knits his brows together and says _are you okay_ without saying it at all.

Steve runs his hand over his hair, Jack watches it briefly. His fingers are crooked, like they’ve been broken too many times.

_How many broken fingers of his have you set? _Broken noses and dislocated shoulders, bloody crunches of bone and _Steve’s cheekbone cracking beneath Jack’s fist—_

Every muscle in Jack’s body is going tight, ready to spring if he has to. His bag is packed. He can dress quickly. He’s suddenly too aware of how defenseless he is. No clothes. No weapons. No convenient exits.

Natalia asks Steve a question. Jack can hear it by the tone of her voice.

“No,” Steve says, with too much dejection, and looks Jack dead in the eyes before his gaze trails to the half-closed blinds. He doesn’t like lying. _Couldn’t lie to save his life_. “Trail ran cold, but I think I only just missed him. I know. No, I think I need another few—it’s like you said, he’s a ghost.” A pause. “Well, I’m agreeing with you now.”

The air tastes almost metallic. Jack realizes it’s because he’s biting at his inner cheek, ripping it to shreds. He stops just as Steve says, “I’m still looking. I know. I’ll be in touch." 

He ends the call with a click, and turns back to Jack, more tense than before. “Look, I’m sorry if that looked—“ he says, scrubs a hand over his face. “She’s trying to help. She’s good people, but if you don’t want to be found, no one needs to know you’re here. No one.”

Jack isn’t sure what to say to that. He knows now that Steve is working under his own steam, without any ties to SHIELD. 

Besides, if anyone was to be sent to detain Jack, Steve would be the last person on earth to bring him in. He’d purposely flub the mission and let Jack go, or fall off the grid himself.

“You mean that?” Jack asks, and he doesn’t care if it sounds ridiculous. He’s not sure of anything anymore. He isn’t sure he ever was, but he has to know. 

Otherwise, they’ll run into trouble all over again.

Steve’s still tensed up, like he’s waiting for Jack to leave, waiting to beg him to stay. “Of course I do,” he says. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

Jack is brimming with anticipation, with the promise of the plan in his head working. “Then I need your help,” he says, and meets Steve’s gaze. “And your shield, if you remembered to bring it this time.”

Steve fucking _beams_ at him. 

\- 

There’s a HYDRA base in Dallas, tucked away from the buzz of the city, hidden in plain sight. 

“It’s not big, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jack says. He’s driving this time. He knows he’ll remember the route quicker if he tries to get there himself. “It’s a shoebox compared to the others. Biggest base on this side of the country is in Seattle, so this should be easy to clear.”

“Sounds about right,” Steve say, half to himself, and keeps his eyes on the road. “Look, I gotta ask, and just tell me if you want me to shut up.”

Jack says nothing, just nods once.

“Did they keep you here?” Steve asks, point blank. 

Something awful and cold fills Jack’s chest. DC, Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan, Roanoke, Wilmington, Atlanta. Those were some of the biggest strongholds in the country, but bases like this? For anyone else, they’d be impossible to keep track of because they were everywhere.

Jack knew all of them. They were all filed away in his head, but he isn’t sure if he was ever here for longer than a day. He keeps drawing a blank. He tells himself that’s all it is—a blank spot.

“Maybe,” Jack says, eyes on the road. He shakes away the sharp little ache behind his eyes. _Keep your head on._ “Maybe, I don’t know. But if they did, there’s a better chance they have something useful lying around. If not, there’s always more ground to cover. You feel up for a drive to Nashville?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever been,” Steve says, and turns to Jack with something close to a smile on his mouth. “But this isn’t my first time clearing a HYDRA base.”

“Better not be,” Jack says. “I’m not scraping you off the floor again.”

It isn’t long before they find the warehouse—marked with signs for a shipping company that Jack is sure doesn’t exist. They park the car as far away as they can, far enough to avoid being noticed.

The base is bigger than Jack recalls, and he says as much to Steve, armed with nothing but his shield and one of the guns from Jack’s bag.

Steve presses a flip phone into Jack’s hand. “Just in case. It’s clean as a whistle,” he says, then looks toward the building, more than a block away. “You think you’re ready for company?”

Jack has knives in either sleeve, the stun gun in his jacket, and two 9mms in his waistband. “Always am,” he says. “I don’t think I need to ask you if you are.”

Steve chuckles at that. “No,” he says, because there’s no point in lying now. Steve relishes in the thrill of a fight. “No, I don’t think you do.”

\- 

They move like a fine-oiled machine. Blocking and defending and watching each other’s backs, knowing what needs to be done without a word between them. 

Jack fights with icy precision, and Steve fights like fire, his shield leaving bullets bouncing right back at whoever fired them. Fists crunching into faces and elbows breaking noses and crushing throats like each person personally offended him. 

When a ballsy grunt of a guard gets his rifle in Jack’s face, Steve’s shield comes flying and leaves a bleeding dent in the guy’s skull. _I had him on the ropes, _Jack thinks before another guard swoops in. He snaps his neck without thinking about it 

There are thirteen agents, seven guards, five techs, and three interns, two of which flee in the chaos. The base is cleared in an hour. 

Then, blood-flecked and still buzzing with adrenaline, Jack and Steve split up to take the place apart. Weapons are taken. Files and documents are copied onto flash drives and pocketed, anything on paper is stuffed into a duffle bag.

Jack knows the codes to every door, knows every passage without knowing he knows, but aside from the intel, aside from the weapons, it’s empty.

Not a single goddamn thing that might be useful.

He grits his teeth and returns to the main room, preparing to clear the second floor when he sees Steve halfway down the stairs, a speck of color against the dark grey of the warehouse. He has blood in his hair. 

“Anything up there?” Jack asks. His voice echoes through the warehouse. 

Steve shakes his head. “Not much,” he says, but he sounds...he sounds off. “Except this.” 

He has a black bag in his hand, and once he makes it down the stairs, Jack snatches it from him, pulling the zipper open and— 

Oh.

_Oh._

It’s full to the brim. IDs from every state, passports from the US and Russia and Lithuania and plenty of other countries, social security cards, all matching sets with different information. 

How didn’t he find this? Jack searched every inch of the place, so how did Steve—?

“Where did you find this?” he asks, a little thriller with it all. He meets Steve’s eyes and then immediately regrets it. “What?”

Steve’s face is grave, a shade or two paler than normal. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Time to clear out.”

“What is it?” Jack presses, fingers tightening around the bag. “Steve, I swear to—“

“Let’s just get out of here,” Steve says firmly. “There was nothing else up there aside from that. A few old computers, and another empty file cabinet.”

“Bullshit,” Jack spits, suddenly absolutely fucking _livid_. “What are you not telling me?” 

He can’t let it go. Whatever it is, he needs to see it. The last thing he needs is any truths being hidden from him. 

Jack whips away and takes the stairs two at a time, Steve close at his heels. “We cleared the base,” Steve says, on the verge of begging. “We’re _finished_. You really think it’s a good idea to wait around for anyone else to show up?”

“Because you give a shit about that,” Jack says, and pushes away. “You’ll just keep knocking their heads together till they finally stop.”

There’s nothing on the catwalk, but when Jack turns, he finds a hallway, riddled with rooms on either side. Three have nothing, like Steve said, just file cabinets and computers that he already, and Jack almost thinks he’s wrong for pursuing this but then, Steve raises his voice. 

“Damn it, Jack, I’m telling you, let it _go_!” 

Steve grabs his arm, but it’s too late. 

The sight of the medical room hits like a bomb. Nothing survives.

The chair sits in the center of it all. A dark, swallowing thing, even with the harshness of the florescent lights.

It’s an older model, but it—God, Jack _was_ here before. He was here before. And he can’t—he can’t remember _why_, or _when_, but his ears are ringing. His head is swimming. _Is that a memory or is that happening now? _

“Hey, come on,” Steve says, breathless and trying to appear calm and suddenly he’s blocking Jack’s view of everything. There’s no way to see around him. His hands are heavy on Jack’s shoulders. _Grounding. Confining. Grounding. Con— _“Come on. Eyes on me. Don’t check out on me again.”

Again? _Again_. Texas. Dirt under his nails and the sun on his back and bile in his throat. Steve’s arms right around his faulty body. 

“I’m not,” Jack says hoarsely, but he knows he’s not answering Steve’s questions. “I’m not.”

“Okay,” Steve says. His face is all wrong. Etched with something terrible. He asks a question, and then he asks another, more frantic than before, and then he says, “<strike>Oh, God, come on, Buck, come here. Let me get you out of here.”</strike> “Mission report.”

No, that’s not right. Steve isn’t—he wouldn’t—that doesn’t make any sense. Jack needs to think, but he’s not supposed to. Not supposed to think, not supposed to speak.

Not supposed to speak at all, but his mouth tries to move. _**Mission report. **_He can see the leg of the chair over Steve’s shoulder. _This one has metal cuffs on the arms and legs. **They’ll hold him. **_

_The cuffs rubbed his skin raw and cut into the flesh. He choked on blood and his own screams and the voltage only went higher and higher until he couldn’t breathe or think, piss running down his legs mission failed mission failed fucked it up and now you’re paying the price you aren’t supposed to fail you weren’t made to fail but if you weren’t made to fail then why _ _do you always end up here why do you always_ _—_

Jack’s vision is off, like it’s adjusting from darkness to light. He squeezes his eyes shut, grits his teeth against the chill spidering up his spine. Someone is touching his hair and he almost shoves them away before he’s all but slammed back into his own body. 

He can feel pain in his ribs and blood on his skin and his clothes. It’s on Steve’s face, too. Streaked in his hair. There’s a bruise blooming on his cheek.

“How long,” Jack says in a rush, throat working hard. “How long was I—“

“Not long,” Steve’s voice is urgent, hands warm and firm against either side of Jack’s face. “Not long at all. It’s...you’re okay? You’re still here with me?”

Nodding takes tremendous effort. Jack’s head weighs a ton, but it’s enough of an answer. Some of the fear melts from Steve’s expression, and he squeezes Jack’s nape, tugs him a little closer. 

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you out of here.”

It’s difficult to say no. 

Jack lets Steve lead him out, and from the corner of his eye, he spares the hallway one last glance.

The chair has been flipped over. It’s twisted and broken into pieces. Somehow, he knows he wasn’t the one to do it. 

\- 

The walk back to the car is quiet. 

The ride back to the safe house is even quieter. 

-

Even inside, the air is sticky and hot. The fan barely works. They sit in the kitchenette with a first aid kit and the window cracked open.

Jack is wiping blood from his face with a rag when he catches Steve’s eye from across the table and says, “You didn’t have to do that.”

Steve doesn’t even try to deny it, just pins Jack in place with a look. “I’d destroy every goddamn one of them if you asked me to,” he says, and Jack knows it’s true. 

He has a funny feeling Steve would raze a hundred HYDRA bases to the ground if it meant giving Jack even a fragment of his life back.

The thought of it doesn’t help.

In fact, it makes Jack feel worse. 

\- 

His skin itches, so he scrubs the prickling away, washes the blood off in the shower. The water is warm against his muscles and the blooming bruises on his ribs, until it sputters and turns cold.

It turns freezing. Beyond— 

_Beyond freezing. _ _Like bullets were peppering through his body. _ _He barely remembered how to speak English by the winter of 1945, barely remembered how to function without a handler, but he still had the sense to know something wasn’t right._

_So, they hosed him. There was no chair, no volts of electricity to scramble his brain. There was no way to erase his returning memories. There was only punishment for letting them in._

_The first time it happened, he thought they were killing him._

_“Hast du deine lektion gelernt, soldat?”_

_Couldn’t answer. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Legs had given out. His body was not his own. Not anymore._

_One guard turned to the other. “Nochmal!” His voice echoed through the soldier’s blocked ears, and then the hose turned on again. Freezing. Breaking his bones. He wrapped his arms—**arm** there was only one **only one until ‘49**—around his head and screamed, but it did him no good._

_He could barely move when the guard approached him. “Genug,” the soldier had croaked when he remembered how to use his voice, body numb and useless. Skin raw and bloody. “Bitte, nicht mehr. Ich bitte dich—“_

_A boot in his ribs. Solar plexus. His lungs flared and seized. “Bitte,” he wheezed, arm still braced over his head. “Es wird nicht weider vorkommen. Es tut mir leid.”_

_There was more he wanted to say, but his tongue rolled in his mouth, head slipping somewhere far from wherever he was. White walls and concrete floor. He thought of a number instead— numbers, so many numbers, as the guard stepped away from him._

_“325,” the soldier murmured, too loudly. There were eyes on him. “325...57...038. Barnes—“_

_“Er erinnert sich,” the guard calls. “Schalten sie es wieder ein.”_

_“NO!” It echoed through his brain again and again. **32557038, 32557038. Barnes, Barnes, Barnes. Remember remember remember don’t lose it again.** “ES TUT MIR LEID! BITTE, BITTE—!“_

_The hose turns on him again. The spray hits him in the center of his chest and he’s blacking out. Vision blurring at the corners and someone is calling his name, someone is calling his name but it’s the wrong name it’s the wrong name it’s the wrong name it’s the wrong—_

“Jack?” The voice is urgent, hands warm and firm against either side of his face. “Jack, look at me.”

_Is he talking to you?_

“Who the fuck is Jack?” The Asset blurts out hoarsely. 

The spray of water comes down on his head like a sledgehammer, and even though it isn’t as cold, it still feels like icicles licking down his spine. He’s shaking. Can’t even think about getting up. 

The man in front of him is half dressed, and he looks torn. Not a handler. Not— no, that was decades ago. Was it? When is this? He isn’t sure what month it is, what year it is.

He moves away, and somehow, the klaxons blaring through The Asset’s head grow louder. The man’s hand twists a knob and the shower sputters off. Not a hose. 

A shower. 

“It’s okay,” the man says, and puts his hands up. Weaponless. Bruised. He reaches out. “It’s okay, just let me—“

The Asset grabs the man by his throat. His legs regain feeling and he pins the man—target? He isn’t sure—to the tile floor. His throat works under The Asset’s prosthetic, he tries to pry at metal fingers, but it does nothing.

“Jack, _stop_.” It’s urgent and wheezing. Blue eyes wide and skin turning blotchy. _They always beg._ “Please. Please don’t do this.”

The Asset’s grip falters. “Who are you?” The words barrel out of his mouth, and he swallows hard. His skin crawls. His heart pounds. “Who sent you?”

“No one sent me,” the target rasps. The Asset’s hand tightens around his throat, just a fraction. A warning. “No one. I promise. I’m not here to hurt you. You know that, I _know_ you know that. Just look at me. Really look.”

It’s impossible. The target’s face doesn’t even make any sense. The Asset sees it all in fragments, because he cannot allow himself to look for more than a second.

“_Look_ at me,” the target is saying. He’s grabbing The Asset’s wrist with one hand, grabbing his nape with the other. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. You know that, right?”

Jaw working. Tongue thick and useless. He feels raw and cracked open, insides exposed and spilling out. _Answer the question, soldier._ “No,” The Asset chokes. His prosthetic is whirring, loosening, even though he doesn’t want it to. Not really. “No, I...”

It’s at the tip of his tongue. Something isn’t right. Something isn’t right. _You’re supposed to remember, you’re supposed to answer the question. _

He doesn’t. He can’t. “I don’t know who you are,” he says, and his body sinks with it. “I don’t...”

The Asset has no weapons to speak of, but the man looks like a bullet’s been lodged in his chest. Like he’s already bleeding out. Terrified. 

He had the same look on a highway in DC. 

On the helicarrier, when The Asset tackled him to the ground. 

And now. No breath in his lungs. Skin turning mottled red. Lips turning_ blue no breath in his lungs couldn’t get any air in and **for fucks sake** **don’t die on me rogers i swear to god i’ll come up there and drag you back down myself if that’s what it takes**, _The Asset’s grip is loosening, releasing. 

He hears a deep inhale, and it all comes back. 

It all comes back like it never _left_. 

His ears are ringing again. They haven’t stopped since they left the warehouse. Since his skin began to hum with phantom volts of electricity. His mouth is moving but he can barely hear himself. It’s all curses and questions and _Steve,_ where the hell—? 

His hand is still on Steve’s throat. He snatches it away. The bruises aren’t as dark as they would be on anyone else 

Anyone else would be dead.

“Oh, _fuck_,” Jack—_Jack_, that was it— croaks. His name doesn’t sound right anymore. It never did, anyway. 

He moves away, limbs heavy and uncooperative when he slumps against the wall. Everything is stark and too clear. Head too full. Body tacky with soap. His hair is soaked and plastered to his face.

Steve is saying something, trying to talk him down as he sits up, but Jack can’t make sense of it aside from the hoarseness of Steve’s voice, not with the blood pounding in his ears. All he can do is stare at the bruises darkening on his throat.

“Just stay away.” Jack’s voice is lost in his throat. He pushes himself up on shaky legs, snatching a towel off the hook. “Please just—I can’t. I can’t.”

_I can’t do this again._

He can’t look at Steve. Can’t face the concern in his eyes or his insistence that this is okay, or hell, can’t face it if Steve finally wises up and shuts him out for good.

The carpet in the living room is itchy under his bare feet. Shivering, from either cold or fear, he dries off and dresses. The fabric clings to his damp skin uncomfortably, sits in all the wrong ways. 

He wishes he had more layers to wear, wishes he could slink so far into the shadows of the room they’ll suffocate him. 

“You wanna,” Steve says from behind him, voice hoarse and deep in his chest. Jack didn’t even hear him come in. He clenches his fist, hears the faint whir of his arm. “Wanna tell me what happened back there?”

It’s not demanding. No venom behind it. It’s just Steve, and truth be told, that’s worse.

Jack’s jaw feels locked shut. He grinds his teeth, shuts his eyes. The lights are dim, but still too bright. He forces himself to move, tosses his towel in the corner of the room with a thump. “Brain’s fucked beyond repair,” he says through clenched teeth. “You know that.” 

“I don’t believe that,” Steve says. “I’m not ignoring what they did, but you’re already so much—“

“I lost everything, and I just tried to kill you. Again.” Jack turns around, keeping his gaze locked anywhere but Steve’s face. “I’m locked up in my head half the time. That doesn’t sound like improvement to me.”

“That’s not on you,” Steve argues. He’s not taking no for an answer. Jack can almost see the frustration burning him up. “That’s on them. You didn't have any control over what happened to you, and you’re still getting your hands back on the wheel. You’re gonna mess up, but that’s not on you.”

“You’re fucking _blind_,” Jack manages to say. Everything inside of him is tearing itself to pieces, and he can feel himself trembling from head to toe. His throat is so thick it hurts. “You really think I’m the person I used to be, Steve? You really think he’s still in there? He’s _dead_. He died seventy goddamn years ago, and he’s not coming _back_.”

It spills out of his mouth, and it shuts them both up, because it’s the truth. 

Jack’s not who Steve’s looking for. He’s not sure if he ever will be. 

James Buchanan Barnes was a sergeant in World War II and Steve’s best friend, or something more than that. Jack is a paranoid vagrant with a brain that doesn’t run right, and less than $400 to his name. He has seventy years worth of blood on his hands he’ll never wash away, and seventy years worth of hell under his belt, too.

No one could survive that without twisting into something ugly. Unrecognizable. Steve just refuses to see it.

Jack swallows hard. He resists the urge to look up. “Maybe I have those memories,” he says. “But I can’t be who you need me to be.”

“What?” Steve asks, almost incredulously, and then he’s coming closer, brows knitted together.

That familiar tiredness returns, heavy on Jack’s shoulders. “We both know I’m right,” he answers, and it sounds hollow even to his own ears. 

He expects it to drive a wedge between them, but it doesn’t. Steve’s not giving in. He shakes his head, uncrosses his arms. 

“You’re wrong,” Steve says. “I don’t need you to be anything. I don’t—this isn’t about me. It was _never_ about me. I wanted to help you, I wanted to get you out of any trouble you might be in, but, listen to me.” 

He’s reaching out, and Jack lets him. Lets Steve’s hands, warm and steadying, come to his shoulders. “I’m not the guy you remember either. So, if this is who you are now, that’s okay. It’s...” He makes a breathy sound. Like he’s about to cry.

“It’s better than okay, because you’re _out_. You’re free, to do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter if you’re not who you were before, because you still have a chance to start over. And if you don’t want to do that alone, I’ll stay. If you want me gone, I’ll leave you alone. It’s all up to you.” 

It might be the years of needing to have things drilled into his head, but the words are like a punch to the gut. _You’re out. You’re free._

Worse than that, Steve is right.

Every HYDRA agent who’s come for Jack is dead. He didn’t allow himself to be taken. Wasn’t in deep enough to believe that was where he belonged. He’s remembering what it’s like to be something close to a person. What it’s like not to be numb and have whatever awareness he felt not be beat out of him. 

“You know, I,” Jack starts, and doesn’t finish. He doesn’t finish for a long while. He swallows hard. He curls the fingers of his prosthetic around Steve’s wrist, tries not to grip it too hard. 

Then he finally allows himself to look up—allows himself to do _everything_, and his chest is swelling with it. He’s been standing at the edge of this cliff for so long, only allowing himself a few glances down, a glimpse of what’s to come if he finally gives in and jumps. 

He might be jumping now, because it feels like the ground is disappearing from beneath his feet.

“I remembered you,” Jack admits. To who, he isn’t sure. His hair is wet and stuck to his cheek. Steve smooths it away gently, tucks it behind his ear. “You thought I didn’t, but I did. When you said my—when you said that name, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About you, and the look on your face. I felt it all coming back then, and I just...I shouldn’t have said anything, I knew I shouldn’t have, but they—“ he breathes out through his mouth and shuts his eyes for a moment, tries not to get lost in the memory. Tries to quell the tremor in his chin. “Once it came out, that was it. They took it all before I had the chance to take it any further”

“I know,” Steve says, hand lingering at Jack’s cheek. There’s nothing else to say. There’s no way for Steve to change it. No way to change any of it. “I know they did.” 

Jack shakes his head. “I should have tried harder. Should have fought them off.” 

“Don’t,” Steve pleads. “_Don’t, _alright? There was nothing you could do. You weren’t in any position to—“ 

“I was a fucking coward. I should have just listened to you,” Jack murmurs, half to himself now. He sucks in a heaving breath without trying to, feels it catch. “Maybe if I did, I don’t know. Maybe we could have—“

_Figured it out. Got farther. Found a way to get past this, just like they always did._

If he allowed himself to be captured, maybe he would have been tossed in a cell somewhere, never to be released, but at least he wouldn’t have been running, ducking out HYDRA operatives at every turn. His memories would have returned and maybe the right memories would have bought him freedom if he opened his mouth. Revealed every dirty secret HYDRA has.

But it’s too late for that now. They’ve already been blown wide open. He isn’t sure what else there is for him to do. He isn’t sure what’s in the leak and what isn’t.

He raises his gaze up to find Steve’s, and the finger-shaped bruises on his throat look worse than they did a few minutes ago. Even though it won’t be like that for long, he thinks back to the wreckage of the helicarrier again.

Steve, broken and bruised and bleeding, still begging him to remember before he tumbled into the Potomac, sinking and swallowing lungfuls of water before the sense, the instinct kicked in to _pull him out_.

It all squeezes his heart like a vice, crushes it to pulp, leaves him breathing out—short and painful.

And pain is the first thing that he’s truly aware of. Lighting up his nerves like fuses.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, and chokes on it. His eyes ache and burn down to the sockets but he can’t look away from Steve. Not now. Not again. He’s only half-aware of being tugged closer. Half-aware of his own arms moving of their own accord, hands twisting in Steve’s shirt. “Steve, I’m so fucking—I’m sorry for all of it.”

Somehow, Steve figures it out.

He has to see it, because his eyes turn wide and miserable. He’s shaking his head, and his voice is brittle, lost in his throat when he tugs Bucky in, when he says, “Don’t. God, Buck, don’t _say that_.” 

It’s not the first time he’s felt Steve’s arms around him since all of this began, not by a long shot, but it feels like it is. 

Steve’s grip is tighter now, less hesitant and more familiar, like he’s trying to meld the two of them back together or squeeze all the breath from Bucky’s lungs and why didn’t he notice how easily they fit together before? Why didn’t that wake him up sooner? 

“Nothing to apologize for,” Steve says. It’s quiet, like he’s choking on his words, too. _He’s on the brink, too._ He’s clutching Bucky like he might lose him again, fingers twisted into his hair. It’s grounding. It’s what Bucky fucking _needs_. He can’t take Steve being gentle because nothing about this is gentle. It’s ugly and visceral and bloody and desperate, just like it’s always been between them. “You hear me? You’ve got _nothing_ to apologize for. You don’t owe me anything, you don’t owe _anyone_ a goddamn thing.”

Bucky’s throat is aching, his eyes are gushing and his body is too weak to hold him up.

So, that’s why Bucky holds on. There’s hot skin smelling of soap under his good hand and Steve’s breath on his skin, the beat of his heart strong against Bucky’s chest, his fingers twisted in Bucky’s hair, on the verge of pulling but he doesn’t _care_ because it’s grounding. It’s real. 

It’s all completely, absurdly real. He isn’t sure how he’s going to wrap his head around it.

-

They stay that way for too long, and even when they separate, Steve is finding ways to touch. A hand lingering at Bucky’s shoulder, thumb over the jut of his wrist, rubbing gently at the skin. Bucky’s grateful for it.

On the couch, they sit stiffly. Bucky can see in Steve face that he’s still holding back, still worried about Bucky running for the hills if he moves too fast. 

“You sure are quiet,” Bucky says after a while, and he sounds raspy even to his own ears. “You know, I think this is the first time you’ve ever kept your trap shut without anyone asking you to.”

Steve gives something him like a smile, but it fades before Bucky can make any sense of it. “You got no idea,” he starts, throat working, voice a mess. Like when his lungs were too tight to say a single damn word. “I had so much I wanted to say to you, planned it all in my head so many times, and now that I got the chance, I don’t even know where to start.” 

God, Bucky hates this. Hates that there’s still a fucking glass wall between them, even after seven goddamn decades. Everything should be easier now, what with the world changing and maybe, finally, bending to their favor for once.

Bucky chews on the inside of his cheek, then turns to Steve, all sharp shadows in the light of the lone, dim lamp beside him. “Then why don’t we start off simple?” he asks, deadpan despite his heart thundering against his chest. “Hey, Steve. Long time, no see.” 

That earns him a wet bark of a laugh, close to a sob, but at least Steve is grinning at him for real this time. It tugs hard at Bucky’s chest.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve croaks. “How’ve you been?”

Bucky shrugs. “Oh, you know.”

-

It breaks the ice. 

That’s how they end up lying back with Bucky on top. Touching, grabbing, pulling, trying to climb back into each other.

His head is too much of a mess for anything else, even though he wants more. Christ, he needs more. He needs the drag of Steve’s mouth and his hands and more, wants to center himself just like that.

But Bucky’s head is swimming too damn much for it, though, and he can barely focus on the want trying to build below his stomach. It’s coming and going, anyway. He doesn’t want to deal with any frustration of trying to make it work. 

It’s just his body recalibrating. He knows that. He tells himself that. He’s been out of commission, that’s all. It’s hard not to think of it all as technical, as assessing damage. As putting himself back together like a goddamn machine.

He’s not going to be who he was before. He’s not going to lose the memories of the Winter Soldier or Jack. He definitely won’t regain all of his own memories now. Not this soon.

There are years he’s missing. Decades. He knows that. He can’t remember which street he grew up on or when his birthday is, even though he _knows, _he knows it all somewhere in the back of his head. 

The same way he knows the craggy cliffs of the Grand Canyon and scent of sagebrush, the stickiness of syrup and the slipperiness of blood on his fingers. The cool pressure of a gun in his hand, the sight of the world through a scope. 

All of it is etched into his bones, and thrumming in his veins. It’s all part of him, just like his memories are, and soon, he’ll have time to understand them.

Something tells him he’ll have time.

**Author's Note:**

> Russian and German translations below. Sorry if these aren’t completely accurate!
> 
> “Помоги мне.” “Помоги мне товарищ прошу, тебя. Помилуй меня, помилуй меня!“ = “Help me. “Help me comrade please. Have mercy on me. Have mercy on me!”
> 
> “Вернись на свой пост, солдат.” = “Return to your post, soldier.”
> 
> “Потому что я не понимаю,” “Я не...” = “Because I don’t understand.” “I don’t...”
> 
> “Вот почему это должно быть секретом.” “Между нами, Наталья. Понимаешь?" = “That’s why this should be a secret.” “Between us, Natalia. Do you understand?”
> 
> “Да секрет.” = Yes, a secret.
> 
> “Hast du deine lektion gelernt, soldat?” = “Have you learned your lesson, soldier?”
> 
> “Nochmal!” = “Again!”
> 
> “Genug,” “Bitte, nicht mehr. Ich bitte dich—“ = “Enough.” “Please. No more. I beg you.”
> 
> “Bitte,” “Es wird nicht weider vorkommen. Es tut mir leid.” = “Please.” “It will not happen again. I’m sorry.”
> 
> “Er erinnert sich,” “Schalten sie es wieder ein.” = “He remembers.” “Turn it on again.”
> 
> “ES TUT MIR LEID! BITTE, BITTE—!“ = “I’M SORRY! PLEASE, PLEASE!”


End file.
